Protestants in Palestine: Reformation of Holy Land Pilgrimage in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
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Authors Clark, Sean Eric
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PROTESTANTS IN PALESTINE: REFORMATION OF HOLY LAND
PILGRIMAGE IN THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES
by
Sean Eric Clark
______
A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the
DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
For the Degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
In the Graduate College
THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA
2013
THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE
As members of the Dissertation Committee, we certify that we have read the dissertation prepared by Sean Eric Clark, titled Protestants in Palestine: Reformation of Pilgrimage in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
______Date: (18 October, 2013) Susan C. Karant-Nunn
______Date: (18 October, 2013) Ute Lotz-Heumann
______Date: (18 October, 2013) Paul Milliman
Final approval and acceptance of this dissertation is contingent upon the candidate’s submission of the final copies of the dissertation to the Graduate College.
I hereby certify that I have read this dissertation prepared under my direction and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement.
______Date: (18 October, 2013) Dissertation Director: Susan Karant-Nunn
STATEMENT BY AUTHOR
This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library.
Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without special permission, provided that an accurate acknowledgement of the source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the head of the major department or the Dean of the Graduate College when in his or her judgment the proposed use of the material is in the interests of scholarship. In all other instances, however, permission must be obtained from the author.
SIGNED: Sean Eric Clark
I dedicate this work to my wonderful wife, Julia. Truly, madly, deeply.
Acknowledgements
This work could not have been completed without the patient support of so many. First, I would like to thank my advisors and the members of my doctoral committee: Susan C.
Karant-Nunn, Ute Lotz-Heumann, and Paul Milliman. Through the years of course-work and research, they have been tireless advocates and cheerleaders. I will be forever grateful. The wonderful staff and librarians at the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel made my research experience an absolute pleasure. Dr. Gillian Bepler particularly deserves special mention for her willingness to take time out of her busy schedule to provide feedback and guidance during my stay. To the Günther Findel-Stiftung and the American Friends of the
Herzog August Bibliothek I owe a special debt of gratitude for funding the research for this project. To all the students and faculty in the Department of History who have provided such a rich intellectual environment for me over the years. I especially want to thank the students in the Division for Late Medieval and Reformation Studies. Much of the success of the present work can be traced to the weekly Division seminars as well as our many extracurricular meetings.
The unstinting support of my family in Georgia, California, and Tucson has meant the world to me and I am extremely grateful to all of them for constantly telling me how proud they are of me and my work. Finally, I want to thank my wife. The life of a graduate student requires many sacrifices, but the life of a graduate student’s spouse is equally full of compromise. Through it all, Julia has encouraged me while always helping me keep one eye on those things that matter most in life. Thank you!
Table of Contents
Introduction 8
Part I, Chapter 1 – Pilgrimage in the Medieval West 40
Chapter 2 – Protestant Pilgrimage 77
Part II, Chapter 3 – Jerusalem and the Holy Land 101
Chapter 4 – Experiencing the Land 134
Chapter 5 – Experiencing the People 176
Conclusion 227
Appendix of Illustrations 232
Pilgrim-Author Biographies and Print Histories 241
Bibliography 253
Abstract
The historiography on western European Holy Land pilgrimage effectively ends with the fifteenth century, giving the inaccurate impression that early modern western Christians either did not visit Jerusalem or, if they did, they were not true pilgrims. Though pilgrim numbers certainly declined in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries from their medieval heights, both Catholic and, much more surprisingly, Protestant pilgrims continued to make religiously motivated journeys to Jerusalem. Some even publishing pilgrimage narratives on their return. Twenty-five pilgrimage narratives, over half by Protestant authors and published in Protestant territories, were written between the mid-sixteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries. These largely unexplored sources underscore the complexities of confessional identity in the century and a half following the start of the Reformation. Without exception, the reformers condemned pilgrimage as part of an illegitimate theology of works righteousness. Using both historical and anthropological methodologies, this dissertation addresses the question of how Protestant pilgrims dealt with the apparent conflict between religious doctrine and personal action. It concludes that in the face of such attacks, Protestant pilgrim-authors, mostly Lutherans, attempted to redeem Holy Land pilgrimage by recasting the practice so as to neutralize criticisms and reinforce Lutheran doctrine. The dissertation’s first part, comprising a chapter of background on medieval pilgrimage and a second analyzing the expressed motivations for Protestant pilgrimage, examines the ways Lutheran pilgrim-authors justified both traveling to Jerusalem and publishing descriptions of that travel. It argues that Protestant authors believed Holy Land pilgrimage and Holy Land pilgrimage narratives could lead to greater understanding and appreciation of Scripture, and thus to greater faith. The second part of the dissertation consists of three chapters. Chapter three deals with the place of Jerusalem in medieval and early modern Christianity, paying particular attention to the Ottoman Jerusalem of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Jerusalem encountered by these pilgrim-authors. The next two chapters (four and five) in turn examine the way the Protestant pilgrim-authors describe their encounter with the land and people of Palestine. For many Protestant pilgrims, the desiccated landscape of Palestine, what they saw as its ruined state, was a warning for their readers about God’s righteous anger at human sinfulness. Again, the authors emphasize Biblical literacy. Protestant authors constantly read the landscape around them through the Bible, and read the Bible through the landscape. The final chapter explores the descriptions of other Christians residing in the early modern Holy Land, specifically the Franciscans and varied sects of Eastern Christianity. Much scholarly attention has been, for good reason, lavished on the relationship between Christianity and Islam, how Muslims were used as a mirror for creating European Christian identity. In their discussion of other Christians, however, Protestant pilgrims are able to produce a more finely detailed picture of their own particular religious identity. By bouncing their ideas of themselves off their image of other Christians, they come to a clearer understanding of what being a Christian meant for them. In the end, pilgrimage Jerusalem, was part of the larger debate about Christian identity and legitimacy.
Pilgrimage, as a process involving journeys, sacred centres and symbolic
articulations of deep religious messages, along with manifestations of localised
meaning, is found -- and replicated -- across cultures and religious traditions, old
and new. It also occurs in the secular world and the world of popular culture. In
terms of its component parts - the journey and the sacred place(s) to which the
pilgrim travels - it has endured as a universal practice across cultures and ages. It is
found at international levels at the very core of major traditions; it appears in
localised contexts through which universal themes and messages can be enacted
and brought down to the level of ordinary people; it is manifested within the secular
contexts of the modern world, with the universal phenomenon of pilgrimage
observable even at the gravesides and homes of deceased pop stars.1
Introduction
Like oil and water or orange juice and toothpaste, Protestants and pilgrimage do not mix.
Or, so the traditional view of the Reformation, with some good reason, would have it. From
the earliest years of the Reformation, two of the reformers’ favorite targets were
indulgences and the cult of the saints, both of which were intimately tied to, indeed were fundamental constituents of, the medieval practice of pilgrimage. The reformers excoriated pilgrimage in any form as a part of the Catholic theology of works righteousness which took away devotional focus from Jesus as the Christian’s true advocate and intercessor, placing excessive faith in the intercessory powers of the saints. Reformation rhetoric, however,
1 Ian Reader, Pilgrims and Pilgrimage, “‘Pilgrimage’ as a Universal Practice,” The Centre for the Study of Christianity and Culture, University of york, http://www.york.ac.uk/projects/ pilgrimage/content/faiths.html (accessed June 13, 2012).
does not reflect Protestant reality. Though pilgrimage activity in both Catholic and
Protestant areas of Europe declined in the face of the reformers’ withering criticisms, there
was one form of pilgrimage that, at least from the middle of the sixteenth century on,
attracted considerable Protestant interest. Pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the Holy Land,
always seen popularly as the highest expression of Christian piety, maintained its hold on
many Protestants despite the explicit condemnation of the reformers. Not only did some
Protestants travel to Jerusalem motivated by profound piety, but a few also chose to
announce the fact by publishing accounts of their pilgrimages for popular consumption.
While the forms of their pilgrimages and their pilgrimage narratives owe a great deal to
those of their late medieval pilgrim predecessors, these are Protestant pilgrimages and
Protestant pilgrimage narratives. They respond to Protestant concerns over the place of
works in salvation and the proper duties of a Christian, as well as support Protestant
doctrines such as sola scriptura. The Protestant pilgrim-authors are able to justify their pilgrimage and publication because of the inseparable relationship between the historical geography of the Holy Land and the text of the Bible.2 If done correctly, visiting the Holy
Land, in the flesh or in a travel narrative, encourages the Christian to more closely engage
with the word of God, and thus pilgrimage and pilgrimage narratives can be tools for
Christian salvation. In helping to define the mainstream Protestant relationship to the Holy
Land, Protestant pilgrim-authors were engaged in the process of defining what it meant to
be a Protestant outside of the purely theological realm. In going to Jerusalem as a pilgrim
2 I have based my use of the form “pilgrim-author” on Jill Bepler’s similar term “traveler- author” in her essay “The Traveler-Author and his Role in Seventeenth-Century German Travel Accounts,” published in Travel Fact and Travel Fiction: Studies on Fiction, Literary Tradition, Scholarly Discovery, and Observation in Travel Writing, ed. Z. R. W. M von Martels (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994), 183-193. Its intent is to emphasize and maintain in the reader’s mind the dual and inseparable nature of the writers as both pilgrim and author.
and then writing about their journeys, they grounded theology in everyday lived experience, showing their readers ways to navigate the boundaries between the religious ideal and human reality.
Terms
Pilgrimage, according to the anthropological literature, is a nearly ubiquitous human cultural activity, but what do we mean when we say pilgrimage? It is an often used, if not overused, term in modern English. People speak of “culinary pilgrimages” and “musical pilgrimages,” even “interior pilgrimages.” In high school, the mother of one of my best friends mothers made a “pilgrimage” (her term) to Graceland, Elvis’s home in Memphis,
Tennessee.3 What then is the difference between a pilgrimage and a simple vacation, journey, or trip? The distinction is largely one of perspective. One person’s pilgrimage is another person’s waste of time and money. Generally, the term pilgrimage is applied to travels whose motivations and experiences are intended to be (or become) greater than a mere trip. Pilgrimages are journeys whose emotional or spiritual weight is elevated above that of a run-of-the-mill vacation.
Etymologically, pilgrim comes from the Latin peregrinus, which is a compound of per
(through) and ager (field). A peregrinus was literally someone who had crossed fields, a foreigner or stranger, and a peregrinator was a wanderer or habitual traveler. In the Roman military, peregrini milites were soldiers who were not Roman citizens. The verbal form, peregrinor, meant to travel in strange lands, roam, wander, to be a stranger. Peregrinatio was the act of becoming or state of being foreign.4 Peregrinus was also used for the Greek
3 For more on pilgrimage in popular culture, see Ian Reader and Tony Walter, eds. Pilgrimage in Popular Culture, (Macmillan: Houndsmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, 1993). 4 Charlton Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary, s. v. peregrinatio.
word parepidemos, which meant “temporary resident,” and the Hebrew gur, which meant sojourner.5 During the early Christian centuries, when the Christian community around the
Mediterranean was small, oppressed, and at times actively persecuted, peregrinus took on a
more figural meaning. Even if they never in their lives went more than a few miles from
their home, any Christian was a peregrinus, or in the words of Exodus 2:22, “a stranger in a
strange land.” The Christian was a permanent alien, a sojourner, on this earth, whose true
home was with God in heaven. Ideally, the earthly life of a Christian would demonstrate this
understanding. According to the anonymous second century Letter to Diognetus,
“[Christians] live each in his native land but as though they were not really at home there
[as sojourners]. They share in all duties as citizens and suffer all hardships as strangers.
Every foreign country is a fatherland to them, and every fatherland a foreign land. . . They
dwell on earth but they are citizens of heaven.”6 Christians were meant to “live and behave
day by day according to the standards of their [heavenly] homeland as they journeyed
through life.”7
By the fourth century, the meaning of peregrinus had developed to include travel to
sites deemed especially holy, often associated with the relics of early Christian martyrs.8
The growth of the cult of the saints was an essential part of the development of pilgrimage.
Exactly how the earliest years of the cult of the saints developed is unclear, but it is certain
that by the end of the second century Christians were collecting the physical remains and
5 Ian Reader, Pilgrims and Pilgrimage, http://www.york.ac.uk/projects/pilgrimage/ intro.html (access date June 13, 2012). 6 Quoted in ibid. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid. Christians had been visiting places of special religious significance at least since the second century. Here I am merely discussing the development of the nomenclature, not the physical acts.
associated material articles of revered individuals. These physical remains were thought to hold some or all of the spiritual power the person had in life. This residue could produce miraculous healings of physical and spiritual ailments. The places where these relics were housed quickly became destinations for devout travelers, as well as opportunities for the holders of the relics to increase their social and economic influence.
By the twelfth century some of the more prominent pilgrimage sites in Western
Europe, such as Rome and Santiago de Compostela, were associated with the growing use of indulgences by the Latin Church. An indulgence was a release granted by Church authorities from the performance of the penance assigned by a priest after confession. They could be earned in a variety of ways, but one of the most prominent was through travel to certain religiously significant sites, or, in a word, pilgrimage. Travel to such sites varied greatly in length and difficulty, though there was a general understanding that the longer and more difficult the journey, the more spiritually beneficial; sometimes this idea was explicitly stated in the regulations regarding earning a particular indulgence.
Pilgrimage to Jerusalem was always a bit different from pilgrimage to other religious sites. It is not an exaggeration to say that the city is the central character in much of the Judeo-Christian scripture. For Jews it is the capital city of the Promised Land. Built, destroyed, and rebuilt through the millennia, during the long generations of the diaspora the desire for return was one of the organizing principles that held the dispersed Jewish community together. Of the many expressions of this longing in the Hebrew scriptures, two of the most commonly referred to are the concluding words of the Passover Seder, “Next year in Jerusalem,” and Psalm 37, "By the rivers of Babylon we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion."
For Christians, Jerusalem is not only the city of David, as it is for Jews, but also the
city of Jesus. It is the place where, from the Christian perspective, the most significant
events in the history of the universe took place, the life, ministry, crucifixion, and
resurrection of Jesus, the savior of the world. It was the site of the ultimate sacrifice and
redemptive act. Jerusalem was thought of as the center of the world in the medieval
imagination, as demonstrated by its placement in the mappae mundi of the period. To walk in the steps of the patriarchs, the apostles, and Jesus was held by many Christians as the matchless expression of religious devotion. No other geographic location could equal the
“spiritual gravity” of Jerusalem. In fact many, even most, of the pilgrimage sites in Western
Europe were associated in some way with Jerusalem, drawing on and reflecting that city’s significance for pilgrims who would never have the opportunity to see the Holy Land for themselves. In image, word, and architecture the figure of Jerusalem helped to shape
European Christianity in all its aspects. The manifold ways Jerusalem was brought to
Europe in the medieval and early modern periods will be a major focus of the present study.
Introduction to the Sources
The terrain of early modern German pilgrimage narratives is largely unexplored, and thus some description of its size and scope is necessary. For the purposes of the present work, this genre consists of mostly German and a few Latin language texts dealing at least in part with Jerusalem pilgrimage printed in German lands during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, roughly from 1550-1648. The high point for this literature was the fifty years between about 1574 and 1624. Numerically, it consists of twenty-two authors, seven of whom traveled in the late-fifteenth or early (pre-Reformation) sixteenth century, but
whose works were either published for the first time or republished in the post-
Reformation sixteenth century. The other fifteen all traveled in the post-1517 period. There are approximately eighty editions for the period in question. Ten of the eighteen post-
Reformation works were written by Protestants, mostly Lutherans; with two Swiss
Reformed. Five were written by Catholics. Some were printed during the lifetime of the authors, and some were printed posthumously. Many were illustrated, some quite extensively, using either woodblock or copperplate prints. The illustrations cover a variety of themes: maps, cityscapes, architecture, and monuments, as well as ethnographic, zoological and botanical illustrations. Some works, especially the Catholic works, focused exclusively on the Holy Land as a destination, while others, especially the Protestant works, wrap the Holy Land in a larger travel narrative, often including descriptions of travel to
Constantinople or Egypt. Some were also part captivity narrative, written by pilgrims who were captured by Turks or Arabs and forced into slavery. As they make up the majority of the works and are the most enigmatic both historically and historiographically, the following analysis focuses on the narratives written by Protestants.
These sources confront us with two incompatible but also indisputable facts. First, pilgrimage was a practice universally condemned by the Protestant reformers as a part of a
Catholic theology of works righteousness. Second, some Protestants travelled to the Holy
Land, by their own testimony, for religious reasons. For this reason, when mentioned at all, scholars have largely written these sources off as examples of secular travel rather than pilgrimage literature. The assumption is that, given Luther’s and others’ clear pronouncements on the subject, any Protestant who visited the Holy Land must have done so as tourists rather than as pilgrims, and must have been interested in Jerusalem as a relic
of the past, like Athens or Constantinople. “Protestant” and “pilgrim” are incompatible terms. One person cannot truly be both. This was not the case, however. Protestant travelers to Jerusalem were motivated as much by religious feelings and sentiments as were their Catholic counterparts. Their practice of pilgrimage, though similar in many ways to traditional medieval forms, responded to Protestant concerns. For the Protestant reader in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe, narratives of Holy Land pilgrimage helped them make sense of the own life journey. In fact, one reason such works might have been so popular among Protestants is precisely because they were doctrinally disallowed from performing more proximate pilgrimages themselves. Their only access to pilgrimage as a metaphor for understanding their own lives was through the vicarious experience of reading about another’s travels. Even for the Protestant pilgrim authors themselves, pilgrimage was a profoundly dislocating experience. In their writings, they implicitly ask the question, can I be both a true Christian and a true pilgrim? The writing and sharing of their journeys was a way to exorcise and at least partially resolve the tectonic tensions inherent in that question. The following analysis will attempt to explain why Lutheran pilgrims went to Jerusalem and how they constructed, or reconstructed, their journeys in print to make them palatable to a Protestant audience.9
Historiography
The historiography of medieval pilgrimage has firmly established it as a fundamental component of popular religion in the period. Jonathan Sumption’s 1975, Pilgrimage: An
Image of Medieval Religion continues to be the primary work in the field dealing with the
9 For brief biographies of the pilgrim-authors and a printing history of their works, see appendix.
place of pilgrimage in medieval Europe as a whole.10 Much of the subsequent research in
this not terribly controversial field has centered on the nuts-and-bolts of pilgrimage in
particular areas or regions and to particular shrines. One thing that the medieval
pilgrimage historiography has established beyond doubt is the central role of Jerusalem as
a pilgrimage destination. According to Sumption, “The pilgrimage to Jerusalem had a longer
history than any other, and it remained throughout in a class of its own. . . [T]he Jerusalem
pilgrimage was . . . consistently the most spiritual pilgrimage of the middle ages.”11 Diana
Webb makes the same claim: “The Holy Land was and remained the supreme focus of devotional pilgrimage. Other shrines ministered much more conveniently to the needs of the sick, the blind or the crippled.”12 Jerusalem has been firmly established as the peerless
devotional destination for the medieval pilgrim. Whatever benefits other more proximate
shrines may offer, Jerusalem was always the defining pilgrimage of the age.
European pilgrimage historiography, however, stops at the beginning of the
fifteenth century, giving the unspoken impression that the practice either did not continue
into the early modern period, or that it was an altogether separate species of endeavor.
Early modern pilgrimage, either Catholic or Protestant, falls into a disciplinary no man’s
land. It is beyond the medievalist’s chronological scope, and beyond the thematic scope of
10 Jonathan Sumption, Pilgrimage: An Image of Medieval Religion (Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman and Littlefield, 1975). More recently, Diana Webb has produced several general treatments of medieval pilgrimage that supplement, but do not supersede, Sumption’s work. See, her Medieval European Pilgrimage, c. 700 – c. 1500 (New York: Palgrave, 2002) and the very useful source book, Pilgrims and Pilgrimage in the Medieval West (London: I. B. Taurus, 1999). The literature of pilgrimage has received comparatively more attention by literary scholars in the Americas and Europe. It is too substantial a field to go into here, but some of its primary works will come up in the following discussion. 11 Sumption, Pilgrimage, 89. For a recent treatment of medieval Jerusalem pilgrimage, see Nicole Cheryron, Pilgrims to Jerusalem in the Middle Ages (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005). 12 Webb, Medieval Pilgrimage, 55.
the early modernist, who has tended to see post-medieval pilgrimage as a vestigial
appendage and little more than a curiosity.13 Both medievalists and early modernists have
largely taken the view that Lutherans were motivated more by simple touristic curiosity
than by religious sentiments in making their way to Jerusalem. On this opinion, Lutheran
authors went to Palestine to make intellectual observations much as they did at other
culturally significant sites such as Athens or Constantinople.
Karl H. Dannenfeldt is typical of this perspective when he states in his biography of
the Augsburg physician, botanist, traveler, and Lutheran Holy Land pilgrim Leonhard
Rauwolf, “Rauwolf was not only one of the few early Protestants who went to Jerusalem, he
was about the last Protestant who went as a true pilgrim. Most of those European non-
Roman Catholics who came later were more curious travelers than sincere pilgrims.”14
Though he at least acknowledges the possibility that a Lutheran could also be a pilgrim,
there are a number of problems with Dannenfeldt’s statement about Protestant authors’
motivations and intentions. While he does use the narratives of several other early modern
Protestant travelers as evidence, all but one were Englishmen and therefore engaged a very
different religious environment than Rauwolf and the other German Lutheran pilgrim
authors.
The one exception Dannenfeldt mentions is a German Lutheran whose work is
essential to the present study. In his notes, Dannenfeldt breezily dismisses Salomon
13 Sumption acknowledges that the Reformation sharply curtailed the practice but did not kill it off completely and certainly not as an important part of the mental landscape of Europe (301-302). Diana Webb makes a similar claim, saying that “Pilgrimage did not lose its power over the imagination even when and where the Protestant Reformation brought its actual practice to an end” (Medieval Pilgrimage, 154). 14 Karl Dannenfeldt, Leonhard Rauwolf: Sixteenth Century Physician, Botanist, and Traveler (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968), 168. Emphasis added.
Schweigger’s narrative, saying, “His very brief description gives little information and lacks
the character of a pilgrimage report.”15 As will be demonstrated in the following pages, this is simply incorrect. Dannenfeldt’s misunderstanding stems from two sources. First, he does not recognize the broad contours of late medieval pilgrimage writing. If he did, he would realize that by the fifteenth century, with the work of Bernhard von Breydenbach and
Father Felix Fabri among others, pilgrimage narratives had taken on a much more observational, travelogue style without in any way compromising their religious intentions.16 Rauwolf, Schweigger, and the other Lutheran pilgrim authors worked within,
built on, and expanded that late medieval tradition. Pilgrimage narratives from the late
medieval and early modern period had changed in quality and character, not kind from
earlier medieval examples. Further, although he was a scholar of the Reformation,
Dannenfeldt does not take the religious environment of German lands in the late fifteenth
and early sixteenth centuries into account, much less the details of confessional
development in that period. Dannenfeldt assumes that for a Protestant to be an authentic
pilgrim he had to behave as pilgrims had before the Reformation. This is untenably
anachronistic. I cannot speak to the English travelers Dannenfeldt uses as a foil for Rauwolf,
but Lutheran authors were true pilgrims. They were pilgrims because they were motivated
to visit the Holy Land by religious sentiments. They expressed those sentiments in word
and action according to their own theological understanding, a Protestant theological
understanding, not the theological understanding of late medieval western Christianity or
15 Ibid., 309, n. 48. Aside from Rauwolf and Schweigger, Dannenfeldt only mentions one other Protestant pilgrim-author, the Swiss traveler Daniel Ecklin. It is thus impossible to judge whether or not Dannenfeldt had consulted any other German pilgrimage literature before coming to his incorrect conclusion. 16 Dannenfeldt does cite both Breydenbach and Fabri, but it is not clear just how familiar he was with them.
contemporary Catholicism. To be fair, Dannenfeldt’s goal was not to give a complete picture
of Rauwolf’s religious sensibilities, but rather to explore his contributions to early modern
botanical science. That said, as one of the few scholars who has looked at any of these
works, Dannenfeldt’s comments are unfortunately misleading.
More recently, in a 1995 article in the Journal of Medieval History, Marie-Luise
Favreau-Lille calls the motivations of even late medieval pilgrims into question, saying,
“The journey to Jerusalem, undertaken in the twelfth century for purely pious motives to
visit one shrine or another, developed into a mere indulgence pilgrimage in the late Middle
Ages. Travelling to Jerusalem in 1479, Sebald Rieter from Nuremberg, a child of his time,
carefully noted, for instance, at which holy sites in Palestine one could buy a complete
indulgence and at which only a limited one of seven years.”17 This is simply wrong on
several levels. Leaving aside the smug, sanctimonious tone (“mere” and “child of his time”),
it must first be remembered that there was no reason to go all the long way to Jerusalem,
risking life and limb not to mention the great expense, just to obtain indulgences.
Indulgences were readily available throughout Europe by the fifteenth century. Second,
from the perspective of late medieval Christianity, pious motives and the desire for
indulgences were not mutually exclusive, in fact quite the opposite. They were, for most
people, one and the same. Further, simply because a pilgrim-author notes the amount of remission available at a given holy site does not mean that he went on pilgrimage “merely” for the sake of indulgences. Indulgences, whatever we as late-twentieth/twenty-first century secular academics might think of them, were a popularly accepted part of medieval
17 Marie-Luise Favreau-Lille, “The German Empire and Palestine: German Pilgrimages to Palestine between the Twelfth and Sixteenth Century,” Journal of Medieval History 21, 1995 (321-341), 339.
religious life.18 As much as anything, Favreau-Lille’s attitude is an example of post-
enlightenment distaste for medieval spirituality.
The most comprehensive study of early modern Jerusalem pilgrimage literature to
date was published in 2007. In The Road to Jerusalem: Pilgrimage and Travel in the Age of
Discovery, F. Thomas Noonan, a librarian in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division
of the Library of Congress, bites off more than he can chew while still making valuable
contributions to the study of early modern travel literature.19 On the valuable side, one of
Noonan’s most useful observations has to do with how the early modern period, as an age
of both discovery and religious reformation, fundamentally changed how Europeans
thought about pilgrimage. Noonan is quite concerned to show the shifting relationship
between travel and pilgrimage as well as the literatures of both. He suggests that during the
medieval period, before Columbus and Luther, travel and travel literature, and pilgrimage
and pilgrimage literature were synonymous. Being a traveler meant being a pilgrim.20 With
the European discovery of the Americas and the advent of the Protestant Reformation, that
equation began to change. Over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the
gulf between the experience of a pilgrim and that of a traveler or explorer widened
considerably. Pilgrimage was forced to increasingly share the travel literature spotlight
with narratives of American and Asian travel and exploration. Noonan is right to point out
18 Ibid., 339. 19 Thomas F. Noonan, The Road to Jerusalem: Pilgrimage and Travel in the Age of Discovery (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). 20 Noonan makes another helpful point about the difference between long-distance movement and travel. To his mind, and I concur, travel is movement that has been subjected to some degree of carefully considered analysis. So, the merchant who goes from Venice to Constantinople, for example, but only minimally engages with the experience on an intellectual or emotional level is not a traveler.
that by the middle of the sixteenth century, pilgrimage and its associated literature was no
longer the only travel game in town.
Noonan’s analysis is strongest when dealing with the consequences of the age of
discovery on travel and pilgrimage literature. It is when he gets to the consequences of the
Reformation that the wheels begin to fall off. First of all, Noonan’s geographic scope is too
broad to fully engage with the Reformation and travel/pilgrimage. Analyzing narratives
from across Europe is simply too many Reformation contexts to deal with effectively in a
two-hundred-and-fifty-page book when also trying to manage the discovery and
exploration side of the equation. Further, Noonan is not an expert in the Reformation. He
does not fully grasp the complexity of the issues involved even in just the Reformation in
German lands, much less Europe as a whole. Throughout his work, Noonan consistently
fails to acknowledge the importance of confessional differences among the authors of early
modern Jerusalem pilgrimage narratives. For instance in his chapter titled “Other Holy
Places, Other Holy Lands,” he discusses the early modern pilgrimage within Europe and
close relationship between European pilgrimage sites and those in the Holy Land without
ever mentioning that all the sources he cites were written by Catholics.21 This is a significant omission because it does not take account of the fact that Protestants did not have the same range of options for experiencing the holy and the Holy Land in Europe that
Catholics did. Where Catholics had relics and all the other physical simulacra of the Holy
Land, all Protestants had, outside of traveling to Palestine themselves, were pilgrimage narratives and the Bible. Noonan consistently fails to maintain the distinction between
Catholic and Protestant perspectives, a lacuna the present work intends to fill.
21 Noonan, Road, 101-129
In her 2012 essay, Beatrice Groves writes, “Recent criticism of early modern travel narratives – which views them as evidence of the increasing secularization of travel in which curiositas, trading interests, and proto-imperialism have replaced older pieties – has not fully registered the extent of the overlap: a persistence of behavior and belief which suggests that travel to the holy land is yet another aspect of post-Reformation culture in which loudly proclaimed skepticism occludes an assimilation of traditional piety.”22 Groves alludes here to the recent vogue for highlighting points of persistence and continuity between late medieval religion and that of the early modern. This is a highly valuable project, as it continues the process of de-confessionalizing Reformation historiography and combating the teleological triumphalism that still occasionally infects the field. More specifically, Groves also takes aim at the trend in the historical and literary analysis of early modern travel literature that has overemphasized “secularization.” Proponents of this position have suggested that “curiositas, trading interests, and protoimperialism” were replacing traditional pieties as motivations for travel.23 In the narratives she investigates,
however, Groves sees “a latent conservatism” that continues to view, very much against
contemporary Protestant theology, “some places as holier than others.”24 She goes on to
say that the English traveler/authors “were unable or unwilling fully to process the
psychological and philosophical changes demanded by the Reformation.”25
On many points, I concur with Groves. I certainly agree with her overall goals of
using travel narratives in constructing a more balanced and nuanced picture of the early
22 Beatrice Groves, “’Those sanctified places where our Saviours feete had trode’: Jerusalem in Early Modern Travel Narratives,” Sixteenth Century Journal 43, no. 3, (2012): 681. 23 Ibid., 683. 24 Ibid., 682, 683. 25 Ibid.,683.
modern religious worldview. Further, in my reading of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
German Protestant pilgrimage literature I see many of the same continuities she found in
English travel narratives. The Reformation was less a chasm or breach from the medieval than it was a redirection or reemphasis. In the end, however, I do not think Groves goes far enough, at least for the German case. In my view, we are not witness in these sources to a mere persistence of tradition, but rather to a transformed understanding of tradition.
Protestant pilgrim-authors did not so much “assimilate” traditional pilgrimage practice, as they viewed it in new ways. What is more, they used the traditional forms of pilgrimage and pilgrimage narrative to support their specific confessional goals.
Groves does not sufficiently emphasize the Biblical lands’ importance in these narratives, failing to make the distinction between pilgrimage generally and pilgrimage to
Jerusalem specifically clear enough. From the Protestant perspective, pilgrimage to
Jerusalem and pilgrimage to anywhere else were very different things. Protestant pilgrim- authors did not attempt to rehabilitate pilgrimage. Rather, they attempted to demonstrate that pilgrimage to Jerusalem and only to Jerusalem could be spiritually useful when done with the proper attitude, although certainly not quantifiably so. What Groves calls a “latent inconsistency inherent in early modern attitudes toward sacred space,” illustrated, she suggests, by the practice of Protestant pilgrimage, is better understood as an attempt by
Protestant pilgrim-authors to demonstrate the possibility that Jerusalem pilgrimage and
Jerusalem pilgrimage narratives could be consistent with, and even reinforce, Protestant doctrine.
In comparing pre- and post-Reformation Jerusalem pilgrimage narratives, Groves claims that the consistencies between the two are evidence that the authors “unconsciously
retained that most disparaged and parodied aspect of late medieval Catholic thought: a
belief in the holiness inherent in places and things.”26 This interpretation, when applied to
German examples at least, does not give the pilgrim-authors nearly enough credit. It is odd to think, as Groves seems to, that the authors would be “unconscious” of the apparent inconsistency between their theology and their behavior. Protestant theologians made no secret of their opposition to pilgrimage and in publishing their own narratives, pilgrim-
authors made no secret of their religiously motivated travel. In fact, many German pilgrim-
authors take some pains to more or less explicitly address Protestant theological concerns
with pilgrimage. As we will see, some were even ordained ministers and thus keenly aware
that what they were doing might be seen as suspect. Grove’s analysis simply does not
adequately explain the German sources under discussion here.
In short, there is a large pilgrimage-shaped hole in Reformation historiography that
the present study will only begin to fill. The number and scope of these sources more than
justifies taking them seriously as indicators of confessional change and identity. That said,
actually doing the work of exploring such a rich, complex, multifaceted corpus is an open
question. To help in that challenge, I have chosen two primary methods of investigation.
Confessionalization
At its root, this dissertation explores the formation of new religious identities during the
first century and a half of the Reformation. As historians of this period, we are faced by the
indisputable fact of the differentiation of western Christian sects or “confessions” from the
1520s on. In 1517, there was a relatively unified western European Church, superimposed
upon a crazy quilt of secular authority structures. In this situation, a burgher from
26 Ibid. Emphasis added.
Nuremberg and a burgher from Cologne would have recognized one another as belonging to the same corps of Latin or Roman Christendom. By 1535, this was no longer the case and much of Reformation historiography centers on this before and after picture.27 How was it that in such a short span of time the Nuremberger and the “Cologner” came to see one another not only as no longer being fellow Christians, but as actually following damnable beliefs and practices? How do we describe, explain, and account for this change, and were there circumstances or situations which mitigated this change? The sources examined here shed light on these questions in dealing with an issue, pilgrimage, and a place, the Holy
Land, that were fundamental to western Christian identity for nearly a millennium and a half.
In the last few decades, the most widely influential formulation for understanding the development of confessional identities in the early modern period has been the confessionalization thesis.28 Most famously expressed by Heinz Schilling and Wolfgang
Reinhard, separately and with some differences in emphasis, the confessionalization thesis is an attempt to explain just how religious identities were formed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The thesis suggests that a primary causal factor in the formation of
27 To be clear, I am not suggesting that the process of confessional differentiation was over by 1535, but merely that by that time some significant change had taken place, some Rubicon had been crossed, and the process had reached some kind of tipping point. There could be exceptions to this rule, however, particularly in regard to people of non-Christian religions, such as Judaism or Islam. Whatever confessional differences might have existed, Protestants and Catholics would likely have seen themselves as more closely related to one another than to Jews or Muslims. 28 For more on both pre- and post-confessionalization Reformation historiography see, Thomas A. Brady, Jr., “Confessionalization – The Career of a Concept,” in Confessionalization in Europe, 1555-1700: Essays in Honor and Memory of Bodo Nischan, ed. John M. Headley, Hans J. Hillerbrand, and Anthony J. Paplas (Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate, 2004), 1-20; and Ute Lotz-Heumann, “Confessionalization,” in Reformation and Early Modern Europe: A Guide to Research, ed. David M. Whitford, (Kirksville, Missouri: Truman State University Press, 2008), 136-157.
differentiated Christian religious identities was the success of state authorities in wielding
religious influence for the purposes of extending that state authority, particularly in the
enforcement of social discipline. This is a highly condensed version of a theory that has
been stated, restated, defended, and attacked by many scholars, including occasionally
Schilling and Reinhard themselves, over the last few decades.29 The problem with the
Schilling/Reinhardian confessionalization thesis is that while it may be more or less applicable in some instances, many have rightly criticized it as too rigid and narrow to allow for the full scope of the process of confessional identity building from the 1520s on through at least the Thirty Years War. For the purposes of this study the social discipline aspect of the thesis is less important than that it alerts us to the fact that confessional identities are social and cultural creations operating in a historical context. What is more this thesis operates in the best tradition of the social sciences: it can be tested. Anyone can take a specific historical case, compare it to Schilling and Reinhard’s thesis, and make assertions about the validity of the thesis based on that comparison.
Numerous scholars have pointed out the narrowness of the confessionalization thesis and one of the more interesting solutions “weak confessionalization,” as proposed by
Philip Benedict and Mack Holt.30 Their primary question is whether the confessionalization
thesis can be taken beyond the boundaries of the German lands and applied to early
29 Though I have tried to avoid setting up straw man, some might want to quibble over the accuracy of my formulation of the thesis. As will be seen presently, however, I will argue that how one formulates the thesis is ultimately beside the point. I do not attack the substance of the thesis, but rather the utility of theses as a general category for historical inquiry. 30 See footnote 31 for reference to Benedict; Mack P. Holt, “Confessionalization Beyond the Germanies: The Case of France,” in Confessionalization in Europe, 1555-1700: Essays in Honor and Memory of Bodo Nischan, ed. John M. Headley, Hans J. Hillerbrand, and Anthony J. Paplas (Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate, 2004), 257-273.
modern France. They suggest that it can, but with some significant caveats. The weak
confessionalization thesis takes out the top down, state control of religion and opens up the
concept, suggesting that confessionalization be defined as “the process of rivalry and
emulation by which the religions that emerged from the upheavals of the Reformation
defined and enforced their particular versions of orthodoxy and orthopraxy, demonized
their rivals, and built group cohesion and identity.”31 Or, as Gregory Hanlon has more
succinctly put it, “confessionalization can be regarded as the process whereby barricades
were erected around each church group.”32 Though it does point in the right direction, the
impression left by weak confessionalization is one of weakness, and it is unsatisfactory
largely because it is not a thesis; it is a definition. It does not make any strong claims about
the mechanisms of confessional identity construction, but instead provides a semantic
suggestion that few scholars would, or perhaps even could, disagree with.
Ultimately, however, the back and forth over terminology and definitions miss the
larger point. I suggest that we have been wagging the wrong end of this dog. The problem
lies with the term “thesis,” not “confessionalization.” Most fundamentally, my proposal calls
for a shift in perspective from thinking about confessionalization as a thesis or theory that
tries to explain the formation of religious identities, to thinking of it as a methodology that
would create an umbrella over numerous sub-methods. These sub-methods would in turn frame the investigation of, and guide us to fruitful questions about, religious identity formation. Up to now, the debate over confessionalization has seemed like nothing so much
31 Philip Benedict, “Confessionalization in France? Critical Reflections and New Evidence,” in Society and Culture in the Huguenot World, 1559-1685, eds. Raymond A. Mentzer and Andrew Spicer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 44-61. 32 Quoted in ibid., 48.
as the old story of the blind men and the elephant, with each scholar grabbing their own piece of the Reformation anatomy and having it stand in for the whole.
This shift in perspective may seem minor in itself, but it has at least two significant consequences. First, it takes care of the problem of weakness brought on by broadening the confessionalization thesis as proposed by Benedict and Holt. What is weakness for a theory, is strength for a method. Theories are meant to reduce and simplify complex behaviors. For the “hard” sciences, there can be elegance in this simplicity; think E=mc2. Methods, on the other hand, open up and expand analytical possibilities. Increasingly nuanced and subtle questions become the goal of research rather than formulating unequivocal and unassailable answers. Second, viewing problems of religious identity in methodological terms rather than theoretical terms also gets us away from the unhelpful success or failure question. For on my suggestion we would no longer be concerned with the accuracy of a thesis, but instead with what questions and interesting analyses the methodology and accompanying sub-methods can lead us to. Also, it is scalable. Confessionalization as a methodology can be usefully applied to questions anywhere on the micro- to macro- history continuum.
Finally, the change from seeing confessionalization as a thesis and using it as a methodology has already happened. The very act of throwing new cases up against the confessionalization thesis begins the process of turning into a method. The act of comparison itself breeds the method. To take one already mentioned example, Philip
Benedict and Mack Holt have done this in looking at “confessionalization” in France. In their case, just how the Schilling/Rheinhardian vision of confessionalization applied in the
French context is far less important than the fact that using it as a lens to examine religious differentiation alerted them to important features of the French situation.33
In actually applying this method (“meta-method” might be a more appropriate descriptor), we could pick or adapt nearly any common historiographical approach and apply it with an eye toward confessional differentiation. To go back once again to Philip
Benedict’s suggestion for a definition of confessionalization, we are on the lookout for anything that “defined and enforced. . . particular versions of orthodoxy and orthopraxy, demonized. . . rivals, and built group [religious] cohesion and identity.” In other words, we need to explore any factors that tended to strengthen or weaken the divisions between the confessions on all social, political, economic levels. This is precisely what I will be doing in the following pages: looking at a collection of sources, early modern German Holy Land pilgrimage narratives, and examining them for how individual authors dealt with questions of confessional identity. Using the confessionalization method with these sources, I will be on the look-out for the push and pull, the dialogue and polemic, of confessional discourse.
In this sense, my work furthers that of Thomas Kaufmann and his concept of
Konfessionskultur, or “confessional culture.”34 Kaufman has defined Konfessionskultur as,
“The inner perspective of the confessions, their self construction, their effects in the social and cultural environment.”35 Kaufmann’s goal is to demonstrate that a cohesive “Lutheran culture” developed in the confessional period and without discounting the diversity within
33 My thinking on this subject was greatly influenced and enhanced by the discussions and research presentations in the “confessions” seminar under the direction of Ute Lotz- Heumann at the University of Arizona in the fall semester of 2009. I give my thanks to all my fellow participants for their contributions. 34 Thomas Kaufmann, Konfession und Kultur: Lutherischer Protestantismus in der Zweiten Hälfte des Reformationsjahrhunderts (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006). 35 Thomas Kaufman, Dreißigjähriger Krieg un Westfälischer Friede: Kirchengeschichtlicher Studien zur Lutherischen Konfessionskultur (Tübingen, 1998), 7.
the Lutheranism of the period, Kaufmann traces the strands of cultural connection that held the movement together. He posits that the connections were not so much forged by popular agreement on theology or doctrine, but by more elusive cultural elements such as the image of the Turk in Lutheran works.36 Kaufmann is certainly correct on this general point and though I did not conduct my research with his ideas in mind, my conclusions bear out his thesis. Cultural productions were significant, perhaps the most significant, bonding agents in the formation of communal and individual confessional identities.
Konfessionskultur is still overly teleological for my purposes here. Where Kaufmann emphasizes the things that bound the confessions, there were also forces working in the opposite direction, that threatened or weakened group cohesion. What becomes apparent in looking beyond theology to everyday lives and experiences of regular people is that the lines between the confessions were often not very clear, and certainly not as clear as much
Reformation historiography would lead one to expect. Looking at a practice such as pilgrimage that, at least in the face of it, Protestants were not supposed to engage in, much less write about engaging in, gives us a window on a significant confessional gray area.
These sources are messy. This is not the relatively simple binary of Protestant versus
Catholic, or Lutheran versus Calvinist. Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Greeks and other
Eastern Christians, Arab and Turkish Muslims are all represented here, a cacophony of voices. Using confessionalization as a method, however, looking for and analyzing the shifting sectarian fault lines, allows some sense to be made of the disorder without reducing it to simple, tired old tropes of unmitigated confessional antagonism.
36 Thomas Kaufmann, “Türkenbüchlein”: Zur Christlichen Wahrnehmung “Türckischer Religion” in Spätmittelalter und Reformation (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 2008).
The Anthropology of Pilgrimage
The confessionalization method alerts us to the presence of confessional fault lines in early modern society and indicates that they could be interesting areas for concentrated investigation, but it does not do much for actually investigating those fault lines. That is where anthropological theories of pilgrimage come into play. While confessionalization helps identify the problem, the anthropology of pilgrimage provides a solution, helping to identify and categorize those confessional fault lines. In employing anthropological methods and paradigms I make no apologies for picking out what I find useful and leaving the rest behind. I do not intend to advance anthropological thinking on pilgrimage with my research in the early modern period, but rather have found that the work of certain anthropologists illuminates corners of meaning in my sources that would otherwise remain in shadow. Pilgrimage was a fundamental cultural phenomenon in the medieval and early modern West, and the anthropological literature on pilgrimage is a rich trove of analytical tools.
The contemporary anthropological study of pilgrimage essentially begins with the work of Victor and Edith Turner. Their 1978 Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture laid the groundwork for the academic debate on the function and role of pilgrimage in human societies. The anthropological discourse on pilgrimage since 1978 is still all in one way or another a response to the Turners. For the Turners, pilgrims are those individuals who remove themselves from “the mundane concomitants of religion – which become entangled with its practice in the local situation – to confront, in a special ‘far’ milieu, the basic
elements and structures of . . . faith in their unshielded, virgin radiance.”37 By their own account, the Turners’ interest in pilgrimage began with a desire to explore the concept of liminality proposed by the early twentieth century French ethnographer and folklorist
Arnold van Gennep. Van Gennep suggested that in all cultural rites of passage, initiands proceed through three stages: separation from cultural and social norms; the liminal phase in which the subject’s state “becomes ambiguous, he passes through a realm or dimension that has few or none of the attributes of the past or the coming state, he is betwixt and between all familiar lines of classification”; and aggregation or reintegration with
“mundane social life.”38 For the Turners, liminality was a revolutionary discovery.
“Liminality,” they write, “is now seen to apply to all phases of decisive cultural change, in which previous orderings of thought and behavior are subject to revision and criticism, when hitherto unprecedented modes of ordering relations between ideas and people become possible and desirable.”39 They go on to suggest that for most of Western Europe’s
Christian history, the life of the laity was intensely local with pilgrimage being the one exception. Most people had no other acceptable excuse to leave behind the normative bonds of society, family, and labor. Though they tend to overestimate the ability of common people to just pick-up and leave on a pilgrimage, not recognizing the significant constraints on that freedom, nonetheless the Turners’ larger point is well taken. For most people, there were few opportunities for socially or even legally licit travel in the Middle
Ages. As will be seen, however, pilgrims’ ability to remove themselves from the social
37 Victor and Edith Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture: Anthropological Perspectives (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978), 15. 38 Ibid., 2. 39 Ibid.
constraints of everyday life was a constantly expressed concern of many medieval and early modern commentators, even those whose view of pilgrimage was mostly positive.
For my purposes, liminality is useful in showing how pilgrimage, this “betwixt and between” period, was experienced and expressed by individual authors before, during, and after the Reformation. As pilgrimage was seen as a proscribed activity for Protestants, the image of crossing over a significant social and religious line is quite apt. Did Protestants experience this phase of pilgrimage differently than their medieval predecessors or their
Catholic contemporaries? How did they use their expression and description of this activity, usually understood as quintessentially medieval and/or Catholic, to differentiate or identify themselves as Protestants? For readers, what aspects of this liminality would apply to their vicarious and imagined experience of pilgrimage? For, as the Turners point out, “Pilgrimage offers liberation from profane social structures that are symbiotic with a specific religious system, but they do this in order to intensify the pilgrim’s attachment to his own religion, often in fanatical opposition to other religions.”40
The second analytical tool I borrow from the Turners is that of communitas. The
Turners contend that in pilgrimage as a liminal activity, when the accustomed social bonds have been broken and separation from the mundane is at its furthest, new bonds form between pilgrims. They define communitas as a “relational quality of full unmediated communication, even communion, between definite and determinate identities, which arises spontaneously . . . It is a liminal phenomenon which combines qualities of lowliness, sacredness, homogeneity, and comradeship. . . [It] is spontaneous, immediate, [and] does
40 Ibid., 9.
not merge identities; but liberates them from conformity to general norms.”41 This is more than merely the common connections of the road. Ideally, through pilgrimage, a new community forms based not on the ordinary social, economic, cultural, linguistic, and political categories that normally distinguish individuals from one another, but on a shared identity as penitent sinners. The rich man and the poor man, the noble and the commoner, the Frenchman, Englishman, and German, all come together as brothers in Christ.42
In the sources examined here, the formation of the pilgrim “community” is a key question. For medieval western pilgrims, membership in a common religious community was unquestioned. Whatever national allegiances or identities might pertain, a Western
Christian was a Western Christian. That radically changed with the advent of the
Reformation. Those old assumptions about religious identity could no longer be maintained. How then did pilgrim-authors, Catholic and Protestant, understand religious identity in both the old light of Holy Land pilgrimage and the new light of religious
Reformation? With the evidence of these sources, there is no unequivocal answer to that question and that is a significant finding in itself. The way pilgrim-authors, particularly
Protestant pilgrim-authors, saw themselves in relation to their fellow western European pilgrims varied a great deal depending on individual personality and situation. Some very clearly maintained the confessional boundaries that separated them from their fellow pilgrims, while others were able to transcend those boundaries to form bonds of religious comradeship despite very real doctrinal differences.
41 Ibid., 250. 42 Notice here that there is no mention of gender and this is one of the shortcomings of the Turners’ model. They do not consider the role of gender difference in their concept of communitas. It seems likely, however, given what else they have to say on the subject, the Turners’ would have said that communitas breaks down gender barriers as well.
The Turners’ pilgrimage model has been challenged on a number of key points in
the decades since its publication. One of the most cogent and influential critiques comes
from John Eade and Michael J. Sallnow in their introduction to the collection, Contesting the
Sacred: The Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage. Even from the title, the challenge to the
Turners’ image of Christian pilgrimage as one of community building is clear. Eade and
Sallnow suggest a “new agenda in pilgrimage studies” that will be in direct opposition to the Turnerian model; “Put briefly, [this new agenda] amounts to a recognition that pilgrimage is above all an arena for competing religious and secular discourses, for both the official co-option and the non-official recovery of religious meanings, for conflict between orthodoxies, sects, and confessional groups, for drives towards consensus and communitas, and for counter-movements towards separateness and division.”43 Where the Turners saw
pilgrimage as anti-structural, breaking down the social barriers that characterized Western
European society especially in the Middle Ages, Eade and Sallnow, while not entirely
discrediting the idea of communitas, want to emphasize the ways pilgrimage also
reinforces social boundaries and even exacerbates them. They contend that based on the
evidence from anthropologists working in the field, and those whose works are collected in
Contesting the Sacred especially, this contestation model provides a more accurate picture
of Christian pilgrimage as it is practiced. As they say, “A recurrent theme throughout the
literature is the maintenance and, in many instances, the reinforcement of social
boundaries and distinctions in the pilgrimage context, rather than their attenuation or
dissolution.”44
43 John Eade and Michael J. Sallnow, Contesting the Sacred: The Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage (Chicago: University of Illinois Press), 2. 44 Ibid., 5.
On the surface these two models seem incompatible. They appear to propose
mutually exclusive visions of pilgrimage. In fact, however, they are better thought of as
complementary opposites, the yin and yang of pilgrimage. The sources under investigation
here will show that both versions of pilgrimage were in operation at the same time. The
pilgrimage narratives of Lutherans and Catholics in the early modern period, as part of
their efforts at defining post-Reformation religious identities, exhibit intertwined elements
of communitas and contestation. Protestants used their descriptions of travel in the Holy
Land to help them define their relationship to the Bible, to the historical city of Jerusalem,
to other Christians, and to the figure of Jesus Christ. Through their narratives, Catholics
attempted to reestablish traditional pilgrimage practice in the wake of the attacks on
indulgences, the cult of the saints, and pilgrimage. As Simon Coleman has well observed,
“Neither communitas nor contestation should themselves become fetishized in order to
produces neatly symmetrical anthropological [or, I might add, historical] theory, made up of views that appear to constitute a simple binary opposition.”45 Anthropological
understandings of pilgrimage and the use of the confessionalization method work together,
and are really two paths meeting at the same goal, to delineate the fault lines of early modern confessional identity.
Cursus
Analysis of these sources will be divided into three sections. The first will deal with the
history and theory of pilgrimage in the medieval Christian West, the reformers’ attacks on
pilgrimage, and the Protestant pilgrim-authors’ responses to those attacks. Analysis of the
motivation for both pilgrimage and composing a pilgrimage narrative as expressed in the
45 Simon Coleman, “Do you Believe in Pilgrimage?: From Communitas to Contestation and Beyond” Anthropological Theory 2, no. 3 (2002), 361.
texts’ introductory material will be of primary concern here. On the one hand, that
introductory material makes very clear that the Protestant pilgrim-authors did not travel to
Jerusalem with any expectation of receiving quantifiable spiritual benefit, i.e. indulgences.
At the same time, however, it is also very clear that in visiting the Holy Land they were
motivated by piety, just as had been the case for Jerusalem pilgrims throughout Christian
history. Narratively, pilgrim-authors and publishers used a number of techniques to
distance the text from features of traditional pilgrimage that Protestants might find
abhorrent, while at the same time remaining attractive to their reading public, Protestant
or Catholic.
The second part will deal with the Holy Land, and Jerusalem in particular. First,
through varied representations, Jerusalem was everywhere in Europe and this fact
influenced the ways pilgrim-authors understood and described the Holy Land. With the
publication of their narratives, Protestant pilgrim-authors added to the number and variety
of Jerusalem representations available to European readers. From arrival in Palestine and
at the holy city itself, in comparing medieval and contemporary Catholic works with those
of Protestant pilgrim-authors the emphasis given to engagement with the Bible is most
striking. As Holy Land pilgrims had done since at least the fourth century, Protestant
pilgrim-authors walked the paths of Palestine and the streets of Jerusalem with scripture in hand. Further, in writing accounts of their experiences they provided their readers with the opportunity to engage with the Bible, the word of God, in both an entertaining and spiritually edifying way.
The third part will explore the way the Protestant pilgrim-authors portrayed the
people of the Holy Land. I emphasize their representation of and relationships with other
Christians, particularly the Franciscans who ran the western pilgrimage concession in
Jerusalem and the members of Eastern Christian sects which held territory at the region’s
holy sites. In their descriptions of interacting with their Franciscans hosts, Protestants
exhibited a wide range of reactions and attitudes. Some pilgrim-authors were highly distrustful of the Franciscans, while others had overall very positive things to say about the
Catholics they met in Jerusalem. In neither case did doctrinal difference play a significant role in forming those perspectives. Additionally, through implicit and explicit comparison with other Christian sects, Protestants made claims about the validity of their own religious beliefs and practices, thus reinforcing Protestant doctrine. Particularly important in the descriptions of Eastern Christians were the controversial religious issues being debated in
Europe at the time, among them religious authority and the role of the sacraments in
Christian life. Reading between the lines, the descriptions of Eastern Christian practices say as much about the Protestants who wrote them as they do about the Eastern Christians.
Those descriptions reveal an interest in the varieties of Christian religious expression and a concern to situate Protestantism within the larger Christian world.
This is an enigmatic group of texts. Interpretive gray areas abound. For better or worse, the pilgrim-authors did not have twenty-first century historians as an audience, and the intervening centuries have no doubt silenced forever some of the nuances of meaning contemporary readers would have understood. Historians, particularly those who work with literary as opposed to archival sources, are in something of a Dr. Frankenstein role.
We take texts that had an integrated life of their own during their time, carve them up according to our own intellectual aims, and reassemble them using our interpretation and analytical methodologies as the connective tissue. There is a certain violence, not to
mention hubris, in the process, but in writing and communicating about our sources, we hope to breath life back into works that have largely been forgotten. That at least has been my goal for this present study. I can only hope that I have done the works and their authors some measure of justice.
Part I, Chapter 1 – Pilgrimage in the Medieval West
Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote When April with his sweet showers has The droghte of March hath perced to the pierced the drought of March to the root, roote, and bathed every vein in such moisture And bathed every veyne is swich licour as has power to bring forth the flower; of which vertu engendered it the flour; when, also, Zephyrus with his sweet Whan Zephirus eek with is sweete breeth breath Inspired hath in every holt and heeth has breathed spirit into the tender shoots The tendere croppes, and the yonge in every wood and meadow, and the sonne young sun Hath in the Ram his halve cours yronne, has a run half his course in the sign of the And smale foweles maken melodye, Ram, That slepen all the nyght with open ye and small birds sing melodies and (So pricketh hem nature in hir courages), sleep with their eyes open all night Thanne longen folk to goon on (so Nature pricks them in their hearts): pilgrimages, then people long to go on pilgrimages, And palmeres for to seken straunge and palmers long to seek strange shores strondes, and far-off shrines known in various To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes lands, And specially from every shires ende and, especially, from the ends of every Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende, shire The hooly blisful martir for to seke, in England they come to Canterbury, That hem hath holpen whan that they to seek the holy, blissful martyr were seeke. who helped them when they were sick.
The first nineteen lines of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales are the locus classicus to begin any discussion of medieval European pilgrimage.1 As with many other scholars of pilgrimage
(in the English-speaking world at any rate), they were my introduction to the field and they
continue to color and inform my understanding of medieval religion. Chaucer’s fourteenth-
century poem paints a vivid picture of medieval pilgrims’ varied motivations for taking to
the road. Spring fever and wanderlust seem to be significant incentives. Significantly,
Chaucer starts off not with religious motivations but with the reawakening in the natural
and human worlds brought on by the coming of spring. It is easy to imagine that after a
1 Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, A. Kent Hieatt and Constance Hieatt, eds. (New York: Bantam Books, 1981.)
long winter of gray, drizzly English skies, cold weather, and close, cramped, smelly
quarters, many people would long mightily to stretch their legs and spirits on the open
road. While this may not have been an entirely acceptable reason for travel in a religious
sense, Chaucer is honest enough to call it as he sees it. Humans, for all their uniqueness, are
still part of God’s creation and subject, as much as the birds or any animal, to nature’s
rhythms. For some, however, traveling only a relatively short distance is unsatisfying.
“Palmers,” Holy Land pilgrims, seek “strange shores” from a mix of piety and curiosity. And
finally there are those who visit shrines to offer thanks to a saint for answering their
prayers for physical healing.
Chaucer’s is by no means an exhaustive list of pilgrimage motivations, but it touches
on several of the most important. Indeed, many further or subsidiary motivations could be
fit comfortably within these larger categories of curiosity, piety, healing, and thanksgiving.
Within the psyche of any individual pilgrim, of course, some unique mix of all of these
motivations would surely be found. For some, religion was little more than an excuse to see
what was over the next hill or, as Victor and Edith Turner would say, escape mundane
social bonds of daily life. Others saw their pilgrimage as an opportunity to worship at a site
made sacred by its association with a saint. Still others would have made promises to give
thanks at a saint’s shrine if only that saint would intercede with God on their behalf and
heal whatever affliction(s) they suffered from.
The motivations a pilgrim would admit to and those actually operative might be quite different. In the medieval period, for most people, excepting merchants, ambassadors, and nobles travel for any reason other than pilgrimage motivated by pure piety was looked on harshly. Travel equaled instability. Leaving home removed one from the restrictions
that gave order to society and could thus lead to opportunities for sin. As popular as pilgrimage was in the Middle Ages, it was not universally condoned and some of the most influential thinkers in the Church were among its harshest critics. The medieval criticism can be divided into four broad and often overlapping categories: 1) economics, pilgrimage was a waste of money; 2) social, pilgrimage encouraged people to shirk their familial and social duties; 3) curiosity, pilgrimage motivated by vain desire to see exotic lands and peoples was no pilgrimage at all; 4) theological, pilgrimage is an opportunity for sin and distracts the Christian from the fact that God is available anywhere, especially in the
Eucharist. Throughout, pilgrimage commentators continually emphasize the importance of a pious attitude for the pilgrim.
The economic argument against pilgrimage had a number of permutations, but essentially the idea was that the money used for traveling to sacred sites could be put to better purposes. During the period of the crusades, some commentators such as Lambert le
Begue suggested that, though pilgrimage was fine in itself, people should consider using their money to ransom Christian captives in the Holy Land or feed and cloth the poor. In a letter of 1175, Lambert rhetorically asked the anti-Pope Calixtus III, “Is there a region or province on earth where numerous and varied needs are not to be found.”2 In roughly the same period, Bernard of Clairveaux questioned the money, much of it from the pilgrimage trade, that went toward gilding churches while poor Christians starved: “The Church is radiant in its walls and destitute in its poor. It dresses its stones in gold and it abandons its children naked. The curious find that which delights them, but those in need do not find
2 Quoted in Giles Constable, The Reformation of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 144.
that which should sustain them.”3 As with Lambert, Bernard’s beef was not with pilgrimage
itself, but with the thoughtlessness of some of its practitioners. “[B]y I know not what law,”
he wrote, “wherever the more riches are seen, there the more willingly offerings are made.
Eyes are fixed on relics covered with gold and purses are opened. The thoroughly beautiful
image of some male or female saint is exhibited and the saint is believed to be the more
holy the more highly coloured the image is. People rush to kiss it, they are invited to
donate, and they admire the beautiful more than they venerate the sacred.”4
Some critics were also concerned that pilgrim money might end up in the pockets of enemies of Christ (i.e. Muslims and Jews) or enemies of the state or nation. For instance, in the fourteenth-century English poem The Vision of Piers Plowman, the personification of
reason flies into a rage: “As for pilgrims to St. James’s shrine . . . if people do go to Galicia let
them go there once and for all and never come back! No one who trudges the path to Rome
to line the pockets of foreign profiteers will be permitted to carry cash overseas.”5 Reason
seems to be saying that pilgrims who leave English shores for foreign shrines are on some
level anti-English. It puts one in mind of modern day arguments over job outsourcing and
nationalistic, “love it or leave it,” bumper stickers.
In the early sixteenth-century, Erasmus took this economic argument and combined
it with an argument for people fulfilling their responsibilities at home. Rather then leaving
his wife and children at home, the good paterfamilias should conduct his pilgrimage by
walking from room to room in is own home, checking on the well-being of his household.6
Ivo, the eleventh-century bishop of Chartres wrote to the count of Troyes to advise him not
3 Ibid., 240. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid., 241. 6 Ibid., 241.
to go on crusade, an armed pilgrimage, without the consent of his wife. About the same time, Hildebert of Le Mans stressed the social responsibilities of the count of Anjou in dissuading him from visiting Santiago de Compostela. The count’s God given duty, according to Hildebert, was the care of his people and especially the poor. “I recognize that you have bound yourself by a vow, o prince, but God [has bound] you to an office. You
[bound yourself] to a journey in which you will see the memorials of the saints, but God
[bound you] to obedience, by which you will provide for the saints’ memories [of yourself].”7 Regular and secular clergy were also often counseled to put their duties to their communities before their desire to go on pilgrimage. As early as the eighth century, the
Council of Ver (755) decreed that monks were not allowed to go to Rome or anywhere else on pilgrimage unless they did so under the order of their abbot.8 Certainly some of this was to bolster the power and authority of the abbot, but it also shows that pilgrimage was seen as a threat to proper order. Monastic obedience and stability were more important than pilgrimage. For the monk, according to Bernard, pilgrimage was “with feelings (affectus) rather than the feet.”9 In the twelfth century, Adam of Perseigne wrote the Bishop of Le
Mans to criticize those priests who abandoned their congregations, preferring to go on crusade to Jerusalem. “Christ gave the price of His blood not to acquire the land of
Jerusalem but rather to acquire and save souls,” he wrote. Again, in each of these cases
(except perhaps for Erasmus) the critic does not attack pilgrimage, merely the way some people perform the act. The value of pilgrimage itself, if properly done, is not questioned.
7 Quoted in Constable, Reformation, 143. 8 Ibid., 130. 9 Ibid., 142.
Though the first use of the phrase “Curiosity killed the cat” can only be traced back
to the nineteenth century, the sentiment is entirely medieval.10 Curiosity, the desire to
know or understand something, was seen as a highly negative human characteristic for
much of the Middle Ages. It was a desire to be resisted with all diligence and effort.
Curiosity was especially troubling as a motivation for pilgrimage. Commentators
throughout the period constantly warned that pilgrims should be certain that they were
only setting out with devout and pious hearts and not minds filled merely with desire to
see what lay over the next hill. Though some scholars do not see a change in this attitude
until the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the travel literature of the late medieval
period, at least from the middle of the fourteenth century, demonstrates that curiosity was
becoming an increasingly acceptable and expressible sensibility.11 By the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, pilgrim-authors, particularly though not exclusively Lutheran pilgrim-authors, were valorizing curiosity even as a motivation for pilgrimage to the Holy
Land. This was not an unbounded curiosity, however, and the limits authors put on motivational curiosity provide critical insight to the mental landscape of the early modern period.
The spiritual attitude of the pilgrim was all important for many medieval
commentators in determining the value of pilgrimage. Beginning with and maintaining a
properly reverential caste of mind was essential in avoiding the manifold opportunities for
sin provided by the pilgrimage road. In the early ninth century, Claudius of Turin wrote, “I
neither approve nor disapprove of that journey, since I know that it is neither of
10 http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/curiosity-killed-the-cat.html. 11 Neal Kenny, Curiosity in Early Modern Europe: Word Histories (Wiessbaden: Harrassowitz, 1998).
disadvantage nor advantage to everyone, nor does it hurt or help everyone.”12 At the same
time a popular poem was making the rounds in Ireland that stated the case even more
strongly: “To go to Rome, much labor, little profit: you will not find the King you seek
unless you bring Him with you.”13 The twelfth-century theologian, Honorius of Autun, wrote a dialogue between a master and student in which the student asks whether pilgrimage to “Jerusalem or other holy places” is useful. The master immediately replies that it is better to spend the money on the poor. He continues, however, with a number of conditions under which pilgrimage might be acceptable:
If anyone is to go inflamed with the love of Christ, and having made confession of his
sins, and using money acquired from their own inheritance or with their own sweat,
and commend themselves on the way to the prayers of congregations of holy men,
and give from their resources to them or to other poor people, they are to be praised
as Helena and Eudoxia were praised, who did this. If however they gad about to holy
places out of idle curiosity or a desire for human praise, let this be their reward, that
they have seen the pleasant places and beautiful monuments, and have heard the
praise which they love. If however anyone makes the journey with money obtained
in ill-gotten gain, or by robbery, or by oppression, they will be received by God and
his saints like one who slaughters a son in the presence of his father and thus comes
to Him with bloody hands.14
Honorius wants to make clear to his pupil (and the reader) that there is nothing automatic
in the spiritual benefits gained from pilgrimage. One could easily travel to Jerusalem, to the
12 Quoted in Constable, Reformation, 129. 13 Quoted in Ibid. 14 Quoted in Webb, Pilgrims, 246.
very places in which Christ lived, preached, performed miracles, was crucified and
resurrected, and, with the wrong attitude, gain nothing at all.
A fundamental distinction must be made between what medieval pilgrim-authors
said about their motivation and what their motivation actually was. This is another
occasion where historians have too often mistaken rhetoric for reality. Medieval pilgrimage
narratives before the fourteenth century overwhelmingly locate the motivation for the
journey in piety and religious devotion. And well they might, given the extremely negative
views expressed by some of the most significant religious figures in Christian history on
“vain” or “curious” pilgrimage. This does not mean that medieval pilgrims were incurious
about the world. It merely shows that they were limited by socio-cultural norms as to what they could say or “publish” about their motivations.
And those norms were quite restrictive. In the medieval schema of vice, curiosity was considered a form of sloth. This may seem contradictory to our modern understanding of the term, but it comes from the idea that following one’s curiosity was the easy thing to do. Resisting its siren’s call took effort. Curiosity for medieval people was something like
Attention Deficit Disorder is to modern western society, without the pharmacological remedies. Curiosity was also closely associated with the sin of pride. Someone who went out to investigate the world would, so the argument went, be tempted to think of themselves as special on that account. Curiosity was the antithesis of stability and humility, two of the fundamental principles of monastic life, and from this it is an easy logical leap to see the inherent tension between curiosity and pilgrimage. The fear was that in leaving behind stability and going physically out into the world, as one does with pilgrimage, the temptation to look around would distract the pilgrim from the pious gravity of their task.
This fear was expressed in theological writings as well as in fiction all the way through late antique and medieval Christian thought. The range of authors that take aim at curiosity is vast and only a few representative examples can be given here. To Augustine, for one, curiosity was the “desire – cloaked under the name of knowledge and science – not for fleshly enjoyment, but for gaining personal experience through the flesh.”15 This fleshly experience is, to Augustine, utterly useless and unreasonable in that it dulls the desire for moral perfection and in so far as it seeks out further experience merely for its own sake is the slipperiest of slippery slopes. Curiosity is even worse than the desire for pleasure, for
“Pleasure pursues beautiful, melodious, sweet-smelling, attractive-tasting, soft things, but curiosity even seeks the contrary of these, for the sake of trying them . . . because of a lust for experience and knowledge.”16 Those who go out into the world “to admire the mountains’ peaks, giant waves in the sea, the broad courses of rivers, the vast sweep of the ocean, and the circuits of the stars” too often leave themselves behind.17
In the twelfth-century, Bernard of Clairvaux contrasted the literal and figurative wandering of the curious mind with the Benedictine ideal of monastic stability. He derided the gyrovagi, monks who, “as slaves to their own will,” roam aimlessly and restlessly from place to place, leeching off society and contaminating it with their undisciplined spirits.
Because it was in the sense of sight, in the eye, that curiosity was born, to combat the vice the monk (and by extension any Christian) should live with “head bent and eyes fixed in the
15 Quoted in Christian Zacher, Curiosity and Pilgrimage: The Literature of Discovery in Fourteenth-Century England (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), 22. See the Confessions, book X, chapter 35 for Augustine’s most in depth discussion of curiosity. 16 Augustine, Confessions, X. 35 (Bourke trans., 1953, 311-312). 17 Quoted in Zacher, Curiosity and Pilgrimage, 23.
ground.”18 In examples from Dinah to Eve to Lucifer, Bernard explained that it is always by
the desirous and covetous eye that the mind is led to vain curiosity.19 In the next century,
Aquinas agreed with Bernard that curiosity was essentially evagatio mentis and thus a
subsidiary form of sloth.20 He makes a critical departure, however, in saying that rather than stability being the cure for curiosity, studiositas, mental attentiveness, was the prescribed therapy. In this way, Aquinas is harkening back to classical thinkers and beginning to make space, though highly circumscribed, for a “good” form of curiosity.
Unchecked or excessive curiosity, that which leads to pride for instance, is problematic, as is the pursuit of a lesser form of knowledge, such as gossip, in preference to a higher form.
Those who desire knowledge of nature without further pursuing knowledge of the creator gain no benefit from their curiosity. This was admittedly not much of an opening for a positive view of curiosity, but it allowed more wiggle room than had earlier Christian definitions. Christian Zacher has suggested that faced with the rising wealth from mercantilism in thirteenth-century Europe, “[C]uriositas was so noticeably ubiquitous that vigorous denunciation may have seemed futile. No one stopped denouncing curiosity in the fourteenth century, but new philosophical and practical attitudes about the visible world were gradually draining curiositas of its traditional meanings.”21 It was into this “curious”
environment that a book called the Travels of Sir John Mandeville made its first appearance.
18 Quoted in Ibid., 25. 19 Bernard of Clairvaux, Steps of Humility. For both Bernard and Augustine, all curiosity is vain. There is no distinction, as there was in Plutarch for instance, between a good curiosity that focused on understanding nature, and a bad curiosity that was concerned with gossip. The default position, until at least the fourteenth century, was that all curiosity was bad. 20 Zacher, Cusiosity and Pilgrimage, 28. 21 Ibid., 31.
Beyond the date of its authorship, 1356, little about this work is beyond dispute. The
original was most likely written in France and in French, and perhaps by someone named
Mandeville, but several other possible authors have been suggested as well. The use of the
term “author” is probably misleading. This work was cobbled together from close to forty
earlier works and very little appears original.22 As two recent editors of the work have said,
“Rather than a wholly original author, Mandeville [if he existed] is best considered a
compiler, one who collects and rearranges the writings of others into a new form.”23 It is
even a bit misleading to call it “a” book as it is found in nearly a dozen European languages
in over 250 extant but widely varying manuscripts. The work’s print history is nearly as
prolific. By 1515 it had been printed in eight languages, with sixty printings by 1600.24
The Book of John Mandeville starts with a description of a pilgrimage to Jerusalem by
way of Hungary, Constantinople, Cyprus, Syria, and Babylon. This meandering path toward
Jerusalem is unusual for previous medieval pilgrimage narratives, as is his approach
through Bethlehem, but Mandeville constantly refers to Biblical stories and saints’
biographies along the way, maintaining a fairly narrow religious, rather than a classical or
ethnographic, perspective. The presentation of Jerusalem and the Holy Sites is typical and
straightforward. He begins in the city with the round of visits to the Church of the Holy
Sepulcher and the Templum Domini (Dome of the Rock) and then describes the
surrounding area. There is a mix of practical advice for travelers, popular routes to the Holy
Land for instance, and description of the sights seen, but little either wondrous or personal.
22 Christiane Deluz, Le Livre de Jean de Mandeville, une “géographie” au XIV ͤsiécle (Louvain- le-Neuve: Université Catholique de Louvain, 1988), 57-58. 23 Tamarah Kohanski and C. David Benson, eds., The Book of John Mandeville (Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications, 2007), 3. 24 Iain Macleod Higgins, ed., Writing East: The “Travels” of Sir John Mandeville (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), 8.
It is not until he is done with Jerusalem that the narrative expands beyond devotional pilgrimage to include discussion of Islam and “Dyverseteis of Peple and of Contreis.”25 The rest of the work, over half, describes the journey into India and East Asia, including the
“Lond of Prester John.” So, this is a travel narrative in which two forms of travel, that primarily motivated by a sense of religious devotion and that motivated by curiosity about the world, are mixed and presented together. It is a measure of how things had changed by the early modern period that pilgrimage in Mandeville is the gateway to further travel, while for Protestant pilgrim-authors, as we will see, travel had become the gateway to pilgrimage.
As varied as Mandeville’s work is, the commentary on it from the fourteenth century to the present is even more varied and often contradictory. There are as many ways to understand it as there are commentators and critics. Fortunately, we are not concerned with plotting the features of this landscape, but need to visit just one of its high points. For our purposes the most important interpretation of Mandeville’s work is that which sees it as “extending pious pilgrimage in the direction of Polo’s curious exploration.”26 It was not so much that Mandeville was the first to present pilgrimage and travel motivated by curiosity. Many of Mandeville’s sources had at least hinted at or played with such ideas previously. The importance of Mandeville’s work is that it took this idea to its furthest extent and widest audience. Crucially, the legitimacy of this approach, wrapping pilgrimage in a package of curious travel or using pilgrimage as the impetus for further, non- devotional travel, was granted not by theologians or critics, but by readers who found it engaging and enlightening. For the early modern period, it is important to remember that
25 Kohanski and Benson, Mandeville , 58. 26 Higgins, Writing East, 13.
printers were first and foremost businessmen, concerned with producing books that would
make them a profit. The finer points of pilgrimage propriety were secondary, if they
entered the equation at all. This is not to say that Mandeville blew open the door of
pilgrimage literature to include anything and everything. As later medieval and early
modern pilgrimage narratives attest, there was still concern for presenting pilgrimage as
an appropriately pious act. Rather, from Mandeville on the distance between piety and
curiosity lessened. Pilgrims could show a wider range of curious observation and still be
seen as being within the bounds of religious propriety.27
Theologically, some Christian writers were alert to problems with the foundations of pilgrimage. Augustine, in his Contra faustam, stressed God’s omnipresence, writing, “God
is in all places and . . . is not contained or enclosed in any one place.”28 In practice though,
this had the effect of encouraging the proliferation of pilgrimage shrines. If God could not
be contained within a single place, then his presence, the divine presence, could manifest
itself anywhere. As emphasis on the Eucharist, and especially the idea of the real presence,
increased in the high and later Middle Ages, so did questioning the value of pilgrimage in
itself. In The Imitation of Christ from the fifteenth century, Thomas á Kempis rehearsed
most all of the complaints against pilgrimage in his praise of the Eucharist. “Many make
pilgrimages to various places to visit the relics of the Saints . . . they view and venerate their
bones, covered with silk and gold. But here on the altar are You Yourself, my God, the Holy
of Holies, Creator of man and Lord of Angels! When visiting such places, men are often
27 Another far less popular narrative that also extended pilgrimage into the realm of curious travel and shares some of the same questions of authorship and credibility as Mandeville’s is Johannes Witte de Hesse’s Itinerarius. See, Scott D. Westrem, ed. And trans., Broader Horizons: A Study of Johannes Witte de Hese’s Itinerarius and Medieval Travel Narratives (Kalamazoo: Medieval Academy Books, 2001). 28 Quoted in Constable, Reformation, 126.
moved by curiosity and the urge for sight-seeing, and one seldom hears that any amendment of life results . . . But here in the Sacrament of the Altar, You are wholly present, my God, the Man Christ Jesus; here we freely partake the fruit of eternal salvation, as often we receive You worthily and devoutly.”29 Again, attitude is everything, but Kempis has taken Augustine’s idea to its logical conclusion. Access to the divine is available anywhere sanctified bread and wine are met by a devout, pious, and humble Christian heart.
The Protestant reformers of the sixteenth century would pick up where the medieval critics of pilgrimage left off. Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and others reasserted many of the same arguments against pilgrimage found in the medieval canon. The Protestant reformers, however, took things a step, sometimes several steps, farther in attacking the practice of pilgrimage itself. In their minds, pilgrimage sprang from several Catholic customs which they found particularly abhorrent; namely the cult of the saints and the selling of indulgences.
The Cult of the Saints
The veneration of saints lay at the heart of late antique and medieval Christianity. The
“cult” of the saints (from the Latin cultus meaning honor, reverence, adoration, or veneration) maintained the place of holy personages in Christian society after their death.
Saints, the “friends of God,” continued to reside with one foot (sometimes quite literally) in the earthly Christian community through their relics, and through those relics devotees felt they had a direct line of communication for intercessory requests. The saint’s bodily remains or material items (clothing, instruments of their martyrdom, etc.) with which they were associated bridged the chasm between believers on earth and the divine beings in
29 Quoted in Webb, Pilgrims and Pilgrimage, 240.
heaven. The cult of the saints was the fundamental principle and system of practice around
which medieval Christianity organized itself.
The origins of the Christian cult of the saints stretch back into the Judaism of the late
pre-Common Era and would go on to deeply influence the religious practices of Islam in its
first few centuries. As Peter Brown wrote in his still essential volume on the development
of the cult of the saints, “What [we see in the late antique period] is not the growth of new
beliefs within the Christian communities, but the restructuring of old beliefs in such a way
as to allow them to carry a far heavier ‘charge’ of public meaning.”30 For early Christianity,
there is clear evidence for the veneration of martyrs, the first Christian saints, as early as
the mid-second century. In 156, the Christian community of Smyrna sent a description of
the martyrdom of their bishop Polycarp to their coreligionists at Philomelium in which
they discussed their veneration of his bodily remains: “[We] took up his bones which are
more valuable than refined gold and laid them in a suitable place where, the Lord willing, . .
. we may gather together in gladness and celebrate the anniversary of his martyrdom.”31
This very early evidence displays features that would shape the cult of the saints in
succeeding centuries. The value placed on the remains themselves, the concern for their
physical placement, and the emphasis on their place at the center of a community of
believers continued as primary traits of the cult of the saints through the sixteenth century
and beyond.
During the late antique and medieval periods most pilgrimage sites were associated with the relics of a particular saint or martyr. The relics housed at a shrine made that
30 Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 48. One could say essentially the same thing about early modern Protestant pilgrimage as well. 31 Sumption, Pilgrimage, 22.
shrine worth visiting and medieval pilgrims sought the presence and succor of the divine at these loci sanctorum. The cult of the saints was an expression of belief in divine immanence, according to which a saint’s influence was manifested in the world through their physical remains and the things they came into contact with either while they were alive or after they had died. Pilgrimage shrines were sites of exchange in a spiritual economy linking the devotee or supplicant with a divine patron, intercessor, and advocate. The relics were placeholders for the saint and Christians were meant to venerate these material objects as if they were the saints themselves, using them as tools for communicating with the divine.
Saintly remains and associated materials were believed to hold the holy person’s spiritual force or power. That spiritual force, and thus the remains or material, had miraculous properties of healing and protection. As Cyril of Jerusalem wrote in the fourth century, “it is well known that such material objects as handkerchiefs and aprons have cured the sick after touching the martyr’s body.”32 The extremes to which this thinking went are illustrated by Gregory of Tours’ suggestion that those who wanted to bring back a relic from the shrine of St. Peter in Rome should hang a piece of cloth in the shrine overnight. With the cloth in place, the pilgrim should pray “ardently and, if his faith be sufficient, the cloth, once removed from the tomb, will be found to be so full of divine grace that it will be much heavier than before.”33 Such beliefs were common throughout the medieval period. Nearly a millennium later, the German Dominican friar and Holy Land pilgrim Felix Fabri of Ulm reported that before his departure for Jerusalem, a friend gave him a bag of precious stones that he was to press against any holy relics he encountered.34
32 Quoted in ibid., 23. 33 Quoted in ibid., 24. 34 Ibid., 25.
The idea was that the spiritual power communicated to the relic by its association with the
holy person would imbue the stones with some measure of sacredness.
For medieval Christians, saints were their very own mediators with God. As Gregory
of Tours wrote in the sixth century, “The one who seeks the patronage of the martyrs . . . let
them seek the help of the confessors (the saints), who are on account of their merit called
friends of the Lord.”35 This system mirrored the medieval social hierarchy. As Euan
Cameron put it, “One approached the ruler not directly and unaided, but surrounded by those who knew him and could guarantee access. Something similar, it was assumed, must take place in the heavenly hierarchy.”36 Pilgrimage shrines were seen as especially potent
places for communication with holy intercessors. They were the heavenly hotspots of the
day.
Protestant reformers entirely rejected this schema. The proper place of the saints
was a hotly contested question in the first decades of the reformation. The ins and outs of
the debate do not concern us here, but some picture of the controversy’s scope will provide
useful context for understanding the position Protestant pilgrim-authors were in. The
Reformers’ objections were essentially three. First, they found the veneration of the saints too much like pagan worship of multiple gods. Second, they saw such focus on the saints as distracting Christians from the far more valuable concentration on God and his word. And third, the saints had wrongly been put forward as valid intercessors when in fact they were merely models of behavior, and Jesus alone could advocate for believers.
35 “Quaeret patronicium martyrum . . . postolet adiutoria confessorum, qui merito amici sunt dominici nuncupati.” Quoted in Brown, Cult of the Saints, 138. 36 Cameron, European Reformation, 86.
The first point is brought up among other places in chapter XXI of the Apology of the
Augsburg Confession, “On the Invocation of the Saints.”37 The particular target here is the idea that saints have their particular areas of expertise: St. George protects knights, you pray to St. Zita to find your lost keys, and so on. The Apology states:
These opinions clearly arose from pagan examples. For among the Romans, Juno
was thought to bestow riches, Febris to fend off fever, Castor and Pollux to defend
knights, etc. Even if we should suppose that the invocation of the saints could be
taught with great moderation, nevertheless the precedent would be very dangerous.
Saints are not dangerous in themselves, according to the Apology, but their veneration is a first step on a slippery slope that leads almost inexorably to pagan polytheism. The Apology goes on to say that there is no reason to defend or support the continued veneration of the saints because the practice has no support from either the writers of the early church or the Bible.
The second objection, that the cult of the saints distracted focus from God and his word, is also elucidated in many places. One of the most amusing and illustrative is also found in the Apology of the Augsburg Confession’s section on the invocation of the saints.
After again saying that the cult of the saints has no basis in scripture, the merits of the saints as compared to those of Christ are discussed. “[A]s with Christ’s merits,” it says, “they apply the saint’s merits to others. They command us to trust in the merits of the saints, as though we were pronounced righteous because of them just as we are by Christ’s merits.
We are not making this up! They claim to apply the merits of the saints to us in indulgences.
. . They are made completely equal to Christ, if we are to trust that we are saved by their
37 Book of Concord, 242.32-34.
merits.”38 The saints were being put in the place of Christ. This instance of the argument
against the cult of the saints also touches on that of indulgences, indicating the significant
degree of overlap between the two. There was no room for the Reformers to allow one iota
of intercessory influence or soteriological merit from any source other than Christ.
The third problem with the cult of the saints also had to do with its spiritual position
vis-à-vis that of Christ. As already demonstrated, the primary role for saints in medieval religion was as intermediaries and intercessors between humanity and God. From the reformers’ point of view, this meant that faith in the saints both stunted the Christian’s faith in God’s providence and misled him into thinking that invoking the saints could do anything for an individual’s salvation. This belief should be replaced by greater confidence in God’s providence, love, and concern for the spiritual welfare of humanity. On their view, this care was most clearly seen in Christ’s salvific act, his sacrifice on the cross.39 In the
believer’s contemporary world though, God’s influence could also be discerned, according
to Lutheran preachers and reformist pamphlets, in the signs and wonders that presaged
the Last Day. These events were God’s merciful call to repentance. This was God working
directly in the world. As Robert Kolb has described this reemphasis on God’s providence,
“The faith preached by the Reformers offered a framework for dealing with all life’s
problems, placing the solution to all problems firmly and comprehensively in the hands of
God whose love had displayed itself in his own incarnation and death on his people’s
behalf.”40 The modern day evangelical bumper-sticker theology of “let go and let God”
38 Book of Concord, 240.22-23. 39 Robert Kolb, For all the Saints: Changing Perceptions of Martyrdom and Sainthood in the Lutheran Reformation (Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1987), 149. 40 Ibid., 150.
comes to mind here. This idea is expressed in numerous places in Protestant theological
works and confessions.
For instance, the Large Catechism’s discussion of the first commandment, Luther,
writing in the voice of God, says, “Whatever good thing you lack, look to me for it and seek
it from me, and whenever you suffer misfortune and distress, crawl to me and cling to me. I,
I myself, will give you what you need and help you out of very danger. Only do not let your
heart cling to or rest in anyone else.”41 Another representative example comes from the
Formula of Concord in section XL, “Concerning the Eternal Predestination and the Election of God”:
God’s foreknowledge is nothing else than that God knows all things before they
happen . . . It is not the cause of evil when people act wrongly (sin proceeds
originally from the devil and the wicked, perverted human will), nor of human
corruption, for which people are responsible themselves. Instead, God’s
foreknowledge provides order in the midst of evil and sets limits to it. It determines
how long evil can continue and determines also that everything, even if it is evil in
itself, serves the welfare of God’s elect.42
The message is that, given God’s providence and perfect love, which are beyond doubt, the
saints can do nothing. “God’s will be done,” we can almost hear Luther say, “now go about
your true Christian duties and leave to God what is God’s.”
The ramifications of these objections, how solutions to them were posed and carried
out, varied considerably. Within Lutheranism, despite early attacks, the cult of the saints
was not entirely abandoned. Or perhaps it is better to say that the saints were not entirely
41 Book of Concord, 387.4. 42 Ibid., 517.3-4.
thrown out with their cults. Where Martin Bucer, Heinrich Bullinger, and Huldrych Zwingli argued for a total “cleansing” of Christian worship where traditional saints would play no part, Luther saw a continuing role for those saints that could be validated historically as models of Christian faith and life, if only they could be divorced from the excesses of late medieval religious enthusiasm.43 The main culprit in that excess was the use of saints as intercessors. The Augsburg Confession states:
Concerning the cult of the saints they teach our people that the saints are to be
remembered so that we may strengthen our faith when we see how they
experienced grace and how they were helped by faith. Moreover, it is taught that
each person, according to his or her calling, should take the saints’ good works as an
example. . . However, it cannot be demonstrated from Scripture that a person should
call upon the saints or seek help from them. “For there is only one single reconciler
and mediator set up between God and humanity, Jesus Christ” (1 Tim. 2:5). He is the
only savior, the only high priest, the mercy seat, and intercessor before God (Rom.
8:34). He alone has promised to hear our prayers.44
This was an attempt to rehabilitate or redeem the saints, to use them for the spiritual welfare of Christian believers rather than give those believers false hope in the powers of those who in the end were mere mortals. Redeeming the idea of the saints required the reformers to thread a narrow needle, retaining certain stories and traditions that could be used as models of proper Christian behavior, while divorcing the saints from their intercessory and thaumaturgic roles. Rather than calling on saints as intercessors,
43 Philip M. Soergel, Wondrous in his Saints: Counter-Reformation Propoganda in Bavaria (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 62. 44 Augsburg Confession, XXI. “Concerning the Cult of the Saints,” 2000, 58.
Christians should instead put their trust in God’s providence and in Jesus as their sole
intercessor. For many Protestants, the term “saint” itself was also redefined to include all
rightly confessing Christians. No longer, ideally, would saints be considered “friends of
God,” but “children of God” just like any other Christian sinner.
Indulgences
Indulgences are defined as “remissions of the temporal penalty due for sin, granted by the
episcopal authority of the Catholic Church.”45 First granted in the eleventh century,
indulgences were originally intended for individual Christians who performed the most
extreme acts of piety, such as long-distance pilgrimage and its armed mode, crusade. Pope
Alexander II was probably the first to provide a remission of penalty for undertaking a
pilgrimage in 1063:
In paternal charity, we encourage those who resolve to make the journey to Spain,
so that what they thought divinely inspired to embark upon, they may care for with
the greatest solicitude; let him first confess to his bishop or to his spiritual advisor
according to the seriousness of his sins, and the rigour of penance shall be imposed
by the confessors, lest the devil be able to level the charge of impenitence. We,
therefore, attending with prayer, by the authority of the blessed apostles Peter and
Paul, grant them remission of sins and release from penance.46
The features to note in this statement are that pilgrims were required to confess their sins,
thus reconciling themselves with the Church, and receive a penitential prescription from
their confessor that fit the severity of the committed sins. Then, rather than perform the
45 Robert Shaffern, “Medieval Theology of Indulgences” in Promissory Notes on the Treasury of Merits: Indulgences in Late Medieval Europe, R. N. Swanson, ed. (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 11. 46 Quoted in ibid., 12.
prescribed works of penance, they could instead travel to a shrine or holy place.47 Until the middle of the thirteenth century, the scarcity of indulgences and the difficulties of acquiring them meant that they were not a significant motivation for popular pilgrimage. By the mid- thirteenth century, however, their number and generosity had increased to such an extent that they were often cited as a major, even primary, motivation for undertaking pilgrimage.
Though originally distributed rather haphazardly, from the early thirteenth century on, various religious authorities began to institute rules or guidelines meant to curb the proliferation of indulgences. From at least 1215 and the decrees of the Fourth Lateran
Council, bishops were allowed to grant no more than one year’s remission to those attending the consecration of a church and no more than forty days for all other circumstances.48 Further, indulgences granted by a bishop were only valid for members of his diocese, unless permission had been given by another bishop to include his subjects as well.49 In thinking about the motivations for popular pilgrimage, it is important to remember that indulgences were available not only to pilgrims but also to those who provided material support to a given shrine.50 Despite enjoying plenitudo potestatis, also according to the decrees of the Fourth Lateran Council, popes were to observe the same
47 The traditional view of this text has it that Alexander II intended the indulgence for those going to Spain to fight the Moors, and thus it has often been considered as a precursor to Pope Urban’s crusade call later in the century. But as Jonathon Riley-Smith has written, “There is no reason to suppose that Alexander’s letter was addressed to fighters at all – it was probably written for pilgrims – and it is more likely that Gregory VII was the first to state categorically that taking part in war of a certain kind could be an act of charity to which merit was attached and to assert that such an act could indeed be penitential.” [Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Crusades: A History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 9.] 48 Diana Webb, “Pardons and Pilgrims” in Promissory Notes on the Treasury of Merits: Indulgences in Late Medieval Europe, R. N. Swanson, ed. (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 241. 49 Ibid., 242. 50 Ibid., 243.
limits on granting indulgences as bishops. In practice, however, the amounts of remission varied greatly depending on the occupant of the Seat of Peter. In 1245, under the episcopate of Pope Innocent IV, even a pilgrimage site as prominent as Cologne Cathedral only received the specified forty days.51 Five year previous, however, Gregory IX allowed a remission of three years and three quarantines (three hundred days) for those who visited
St. Peter’s in Rome between Pentecost and the eighth day after the Feast of Sts. Peter and
Paul (June 29).52 Though this extraordinary indulgence grant was likely motivated by the
Pope’s desire to attract pilgrims to Rome, it nonetheless shows the willingness of certain popes to bend the rules when they saw fit.53
Throughout the high and later Middle Ages the Church continued to institute stop- gap measures to curb the proliferation of indulgences. From their origins in the eleventh century, it had been assumed that the recipient of an indulgence was expending a great amount of time, money, effort, aside from exposing themselves to the dangers of travel and warfare, at least roughly commensurate with amount of remission they received, although the precise calculation of this relationship was always problematic. With their increasing availability though, it became obvious that those people who lived closer to an indulgence- granting shrine could receive the same benefit for far less effort. To deal with that situation, in 1291 Pope Nicholas IV instituted the practice of offering amounts of remission that varied according to the distance traveled for pilgrims visiting St. John Lateran on days when relics were on public display. Inhabitants of the area right around Rome received
51 Ibid., 242. 52 Ibid., 243. 53 Indeed, as Diana Webb has noted, “The pilgrim to Rome in the 1290s . . . could obtain more generous indulgences than were (officially) available elsewhere in Christendom” (Pardons, 244).
four years and four quarantines. It was five years for pilgrims from further away but still in
Italy, and seven years for those ultramontini or ultramare.54
The year 1300 was a turning point in the expansion of indulgences. In the first two months of that year, the pilgrims who were filing into the city let it be known that they expected something special from Pope Boniface VIII. A rumor, supposedly common to many of the pilgrims in the city, had made it to the papal ear that in 1200 Innocent III had promulgated a generous indulgence. In response, and despite not finding any supporting evidence for this rumor in the archives, on February 22, Boniface proclaimed the first
Roman Holy Year in the bull Antiquorum habet, granting a plenary or full indulgence to devout pilgrims who visited St. Peter’s and St. Paul’s that year.55 No better example of the almost exponential expansion of indulgences, this papal one-upmanship, can be provided than the case of this first Roman Holy Year. It seems that Boniface’s original intent, based on the previously mentioned pilgrim rumor, was that Holy Years would take place every century. In 1350, however, the newly elected Clement VI announced the second Roman
Holy Year in his bull Unigenitus. Clement had any number of reasons for making this move.
The most important from a pastoral point of view had to do with the fact that the spiritual benefits of the Roman Holy Year as originally conceived by Boniface would only benefit a small number of people. Reducing the time span to fifty years would allow many more people to take advantage of this extraordinary opportunity.56 The expansion of indulgence privileges associated with the 1350 Holy Year did not stop there, however. A pilgrim did
54 Ibid., 243. 55 Ibid., 244. In an interesting play on the pilgrimage distance traveled distinction made by Nicholas IV, mentioned above, Boniface stipulated that pilgrims from Italy had to spend at least thirty days, and non-Italians at least fifteen days, visiting the prescribed sites (Webb, Pardons, 248). 56 Ibid., 249.
not actually have to make it to Rome to gain the benefits of the indulgence. Unigenitus
allowed that anyone who set out but was impeded or died before completing their vow
would gain the indulgence.57 Not only that, but under pressure from Philip VI of France and
after some dithering, Clement further extended the privilege to whole categories of people
who were unable to make the trip to Rome for a variety of reasons, such as ill-health or social and familial responsibilities.58 In the late fourteenth century, Pope Urban VI, taking a
page from Clement’s playbook, stated that, as human vitality had diminished even further
since 1300, it was only fair to further reduce the period between Holy Years to the length of
Christ’s earthly life, thirty-three years.59 In 1425, Pope Martin V declared that the Holy
Years would occur every twenty-five years rather than every thirty-three, and this is the
timetable followed by the Catholic Church to this day.60
The effect of the proliferation of indulgences on the motivation of pilgrims has been
one of the central questions of medieval pilgrimage research. Indulgences were a
significant incentive not only for pilgrims, but for the administrators of pilgrimage shrines
to offer them. It was a simple economic equation. The more and greater the indulgence, the
more demand for the indulgence, the more pilgrims frequenting the shrine where the
indulgence is given. This resulted over time in an increased availability of plenary
indulgences, which meant that, at least in theory, the perceived necessity of long-distance pilgrimages decreased. Although exact numbers cannot be known, there does not seem to have been any significant decrease in long-distance pilgrimage in the later Middle Ages as a result of the greater availability of indulgences closer to home. Many late medieval pilgrims
57 Ibid., 252. 58 Ibid., 253. 59 Ibid., 255. 60 Ibid., 265.
who left records of their journeys do provide an accounting of the indulgences earned - seven years here, a plenary there - but many also did not. The transactional nature of indulgences and their descriptions in travel narratives should not blind us to other, less quantitative aspects of and motivations for pilgrimage. The fact that even as indulgences became more available people continued to risk their lives on dangerous journeys to far-off shrines indicates that there was more to the experience than simply the quantifiable assurance of salvation. Many factors including increased social capital (think here of the
Wife of Bath in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales) and curiosity to see new lands and peoples were surely important, but the role of genuine religious devotion should not be underestimated either.
For Martin Luther, the problems with pilgrimage started with indulgences. The story is so famous that it hardly bears repeating, but on October 31, 1517, Martin Luther made public his ninety-five theses concerning the value of indulgences, opening the
Pandora’s Box that would become the Reformation. It is abundantly clear and widely accepted by historians that this was not Luther’s intent. His goals were two-fold and related. First, he wanted to call attention to, from his perspective, the scandalous way indulgences, and specifically the so-called St. Peter’s Indulgence, a fundraising tool for the completion of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, were being sold to lay people by representatives of the Church. Indulgence peddlers were, according to Luther, leading common Christians to the mistaken belief that purchasing an indulgence was sufficient for gaining absolution of sins. Luther wanted the Church to publicly reaffirm the doctrine that indulgences only relieved the purchaser from performing penance, the purchase of the indulgence
constituting evidence of the willing acceptance of that penance.61 He had been preaching
against the common practices of the indulgence peddlers for several years before this time
to little effect. Second, he wanted to reaffirm the central place in Christian life of true
preaching of the Gospel and how it would lead to repentance.62 As Scott Hendrix has
described Luther’s perspective, “Jesus never ordered the preaching of indulgences, but he
did forcefully command the proclamation of the Gospel.”63 As Luther’s thought on
indulgences and its expression developed, his fundamental problem with them became
increasingly clear. David Bagchi has posed Luther’s concern with indulgences as a Catch-
22: “indulgences alleviate the penalties [of sin] of those who are truly contrite; but those
who are truly contrite seek penalties, not their alleviation.”64
The essential problem with indulgences, in Luther’s estimation, came from the fact
that at best they do nothing. They are entirely superfluous. At worst, they provide a false
sense of security to Christians who might otherwise be more aware of the depths of their
own sinfulness and irredeemability. On both of these points it is important to note Luther’s
pastoral concern. Ultimately, the indulgence sellers were endangering the souls of his
parishioners, and bringing the matter up for debate was his first attempt to address the
situation with the wider church.
61 The best brief explanation of the indulgence controversy I have run across is found in Scott Hendrix, Luther and the Papacy: Stages in a Reformation Conflict (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1981), 23-26. 62 Heiko A. Oberman, Luther: Man Between God and the Devil (London: Harper Collins, 1993), 188-190. 63 Hendrix, Luther and the Papacy, 28. 64 David Bagchi, “Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses and the Contemporary Criticism of Indulgences,” in Promissory Notes on the Treasury of Merits: Indulgences in Late Medieval Europe, ed. R. N. Swanson (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 336.
Even though in the ninety-five theses themselves Luther does not explicitly
mention it, one of those implications had to do with pilgrimage. Pilgrimage was collateral
damage in his more focused attack on indulgence peddling. In his Explanation of the Ninety-
Five Theses from 1518, however, Luther does explain more fully the problems he sees with indulgences and clearly elucidates their relationship to pilgrimage. In explaining the fortieth thesis, “The truly contrite sinner seeks out and loves to pay the penalties of sin; whereas the very multitude of indulgences dulls men’s consciences, and tends to make them hate the penalties,”65 he asks a rhetorical question: “What do you say, then, about
those who make pilgrimages to Rome, Jerusalem, St. James, Aachen, Trier, and many other
regions and places to obtain indulgences?” Luther responds to his own question by saying
that pilgrims fall into four categories. The first and most common are those we might now
call tourists, who are curious “to see and hear strange and unknown things.”66 This
curiosity stemmed from substandard preaching and religious services: “This levity
proceeds from a loathing for and boredom with the worship services, which have been
neglected in the pilgrims’ own church. Otherwise one would find incomparably better
indulgences at home than in all the other places put together. Furthermore, he would be
closer to Christ and the saints if he were not so foolish as to prefer sticks and stones to the
poor and his neighbors whom he should serve out of love. And he would be closer to Christ
also if he were to provide for his family.” One of the most immediately striking things about
this passage is how “medieval” it is. As we have seen, Luther’s concern with avoiding
65 “Contritionis veritas penas querit et amat, Veniarum autem largitas relaxat et odisse facit, saltem occasione.” John Dillenberg’s translation from Matin Luther: Selections from his Writings (New York: Doubleday, 1961), 494. 66 All quotations from the Ninety-Five Theses come from Martin Luther, “Disputatio pro declaratione virtutis indulgentiarum 1517” WA 1 Schriften (Weimar: Böhlan, 1883), 229- 38.
curiosity and taking care of one’s civic and familial responsibilities were central complaints
of medieval commentators on pilgrimage.
The second group makes pilgrimages for the sake of quantifiable spiritual benefits.
This is where Luther’s pilgrimage argument meets his argument concerning indulgences.
He has already made clear that indulgences earn their bearer no merit: “surely those who
make pilgrimages for the sake of indulgences merit nothing at all.” With both purchased
indulgences and those earned through pilgrimage, common Christians jeopardize their
salvation by misunderstanding indulgences’ highly circumscribed value. For Luther,
gaining indulgences was not a worthwhile reason for making a pilgrimage to a shrine in the
next village much less thousands of miles away in Jerusalem: “Those people are to be
justifiably ridiculed who neglect Christ and neighbor at home, in order to spend ten times
as much money away from home without having any results and merit to show for it. . .
Therefore he who would remain at home. . .would be doing far better – indeed, he would be
doing the only right thing – than if he were to bring home all the indulgences of Jerusalem
and Rome.” Again, the consonance with medieval commentators is most striking. Pilgrims
waste time and money, shirking their duties to go on a fool’s errand.
The third group are those masochists who “long for affliction and labor” for their
sins. If this is the goal, Luther claims, would-be pilgrims could do just as well torturing themselves at home.
Finally, the fourth, and Luther thinks the smallest, group is made up of pilgrims who are genuinely “motivated by a singular devotion for the honor of the saints, the glory of
God, and [their] own edification, just as St. Lucia made a pilgrimage to St. Agatha and some of the holy fathers made a pilgrimage to Rome. The result proved that they did not do this
out of curiosity. . . I am glad that the vows made to go on such pilgrimages are commuted to
other works. Would that they were commuted gratis!” Before very long Luther would
abandon the value of worshiping the saints as well, so that only on the last two points (the
glory of God and their own edification) that Luther might be seen as leaving the door open
even a crack for pilgrimage. As will be shown, this is exactly the opening some Protestant
traveler/authors exploited.
European and Holy Land Pilgrimage in the Sixteenth Century
To understand the Protestant pilgrim-authors’ attitudes toward pilgrimage, it is useful first to examine the state of regional pilgrimage within those European lands touched by the early Reformation. Overall, the picture was one of decline. The reformers’ attacks on pilgrimage seem to have significantly reduced the number of pilgrims traveling to prominent regional shrines. A great deal of research has been done on the popular shrine at
Grimmenthal. Several reformers specifically picked out Grimmenthal for censure, including
Martin Luther in his 1520 Letter to the Christian Nobility:
The forest chapels and rustic churches must be utterly destroyed -- those, namely, to
which the recent pilgrimages have been directed -- Wilsnack, Sternberg, Trier, the
Grimmenthal, and now Regensburg and a goodly number of others. Oh, what a
terrible and heavy account will the bishops have to render, who permit this devilish
deceit and receive its profits.67
Johannes Mötsch has examined the records for Grimmenthal from the early years of the
Reformation and has found a marked decline in revenue during the 1520s. In February
67 http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/LutNobi.html, chapter 20. Pilgrimage to Grimmenthal began in 1449 and centered on an image of the Virgin displayed there, which was alleged to work wonderful cures, especially for syphilis.
1520, 991 gulden were taken from the offering box in front of the miraculous image of the
Virgin. The next year that number shrank to 931. By February 1523 the total fell to 584
gulden, and by 1525 only 82 gulden were donated.68 The shrine’s accountant blamed the
Luterani for this downturn. They had, he believed, seduced the common people “with their
preaching” not to undertake pilgrimages, so that Grimmenthal and other shrines had been
“beaten to the ground.”69 Even shrines in strongly Catholic Bavaria experienced significant decline. As Philip Soergel has noted, “Of the more than twelve thousand surviving records of miracles from late medieval Bavarian shrines, the overwhelming majority are
concentrated in the three decades before 1520.”70 And again blame was laid on Luther’s
doorstep. The clerical overseer at Tuntenhausen noted in a letter to his superiors that, “The
devotion of the people has partly dissolved through Luther’s swindling…[and pilgrimage to
the shrine] has largely disappeared.”71
Accepting that Central European pilgrimage experienced a decline in the first half of
the sixteenth century, the question then becomes, was pilgrimage to Jerusalem also in
decline at that time. For the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the annual average number
68 I have not been able to check Mötsch’s work directly. These numbers from his work come through Ulman Weiß, “’Walfahrt bringt keyn Wolfart’: Vom Sinn und Unsinn der Pilgerreise in früherer Zeit” in Wallfahrt und Reformation – Pout’ a reformace: Zur Veränderung religiöser Praxis in Deutschland und Böhmen in den Umbrüchen der Frühen Neuzeit, Jan Hrdina, Hartmut Kühne, and Thomas Müller, eds. (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Verlag, 2007), 19. 69 Quoted in Weiß, Walfahrt, 19. “mit irem Predigen . . . zu Boden geschlagen.” As Weiß notes, the situation was similar for other shrines such as Peißenberg, Mühlberg, and Zehma. 70 Soergel, Wondrous, 72. 71 Ibid., 73.
of Western European Jerusalem pilgrims has been safely estimated at around 300.72
Though the evidence provided in European historiography is largely anecdotal, the number of western European Jerusalem pilgrims does seem to have dropped off significantly by the mid-sixteenth century. Many traveler/authors bemoaned the drop in Holy Land pilgrimage numbers and often looked back to a glorious pilgrimage past when a fleet of ships yearly left the ports of Venice and Genoa filled to overflowing with devout pilgrims. More concretely, the Venetian state had once considered the pilgrimage trade so important that they maintained what amounted to a travel agent’s office to aid pilgrims in making the necessary arrangements for passage to the Holy Land. By the end of the sixteenth century, however, the Venetian authorities had stopped this long running practice owing to decreasing pilgrim numbers.73
One promising place to look for more quantitative evidence of decline is in the
Ottoman administrative archives for Palestine. Oded Peri has surveyed these records for evidence of the numbers of Christian pilgrims who visited Jerusalem in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Using records for the collection of taxes and fees from Christian pilgrims from the port city of Jaffa, where the majority of European pilgrims disembarked,
Peri calculates that for the fourteen-year period between 1580 and 1594, an average of
72 Colin Morris, “Pilgrimage to Jerusalem in the Late Middle Ages,” in Pilgrimage: The English Experience from Beckett to Bunyan, Colin Morris and Peter Roberts, eds., (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 142. 73 G. Dickinson, “The Journey to the Holy Land in the Sixteenth Century,” French Studies 8 (1954): 46. For more on office of the Cattaveri, see Nicole Chareyron. Pilgrims to Jerusalem in the Middle Ages (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 41-42.
forty western European pilgrims arrived annually.74 If we take the 300 annual average as a
highpoint, this is an 87% decrease.75
Ottoman records were also kept of the fees paid by pilgrims at the Church of the
Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. These records categorized pilgrims according to geographic origin. Those termed Bilad-ı Ifrenc were from central and western Europe. For the only period that Peri provides actual numbers, the seven months between September 14, 1581 and April 14, 1582, sixteen Ifrenc paid for entrance to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.76
As a whole, however, these data show considerable fluctuation in the number of pilgrims
from year to year. For example, in the year 1580-81, a total of 294 Christian pilgrims paid
fees and tolls in Jerusalem. In the next year, 1582-83, 1359 Christian pilgrims paid the same fees and tolls. This is an almost five-fold increase in one year. The next year, 1583-84, the number went down to 908, with only 76 pilgrims noted in the following year, 1584-
85.77 This is a nearly eighteen-fold decrease from the high-point two years previous. This
extreme fluctuation characterizes the entire period for which records exist. Though Peri
does not give complete figures for specifically western European pilgrims, the overall trend
is highly erratic and does not show a significant decrease in total Christian pilgrimage
numbers (western or eastern) from the mid-sixteenth to the later seventeenth centuries. It
74 Oded Peri, Christianity under Islam in Jerusalem: The Question of the Holy Sites in Early Ottoman Times (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 170. 75 Ibid. In the same place Peri goes on to say, however, that though the documentation is incomplete, Jaffa seems to have experienced a significant increase in pilgrim traffic by the end of the seventeenth century and into the early eighteenth century, and by the mid- eighteenth century “the Ottoman state’s income from the Jaffa port rose sharply by over 500 percent.” 76 Ibid., 166. Peri also lists a total of 52 indigent people who were not able to pay the normal entrance fees. By convention, the origin of people in this category was not noted and so it is impossible to know how many of them might have been Ifrenc. 77 Ibid., 179.
is likely that the numbers of western European pilgrims also fluctuated significantly from
year to year. Though compelling, more research in these Ottoman sources with the specific
question in mind of numbers of Jerusalem pilgrims from western Europe needs to be
conducted before firm conclusions about western European pilgrimage are drawn.
Until further evidence is available, cautious acceptance of an overall decrease in
western European Jerusalem pilgrimage after the start of the Reformation is warranted.
Several factors would have contributed to the decline. The “Turkish terror” likely played
some role. The Ottoman defeat of the Mamluks in 1516/17 and the subsequent enfolding of the Holy Land into Ottoman territory undoubtedly deterred some potential pilgrims, especially in the early decades of the sixteenth century. The decline may also partly be an unintended consequence of a shift in the authorial voice in Jerusalem pilgrimage narratives.
From the fourteenth century onward, pilgrim-authors increasingly wrote of their personal experiences of travel in the first person. They wrote more openly than had their predecessors about the dangers and discomforts of long-distance travel, including the possibility of being attacked by pirates and enslaved for years in Ottoman galleys.
Understandably, this might have cooled the ardor of all but the most determined potential pilgrim. For many people inclined to take such journeys but reticent to endure the hardships, it might have seemed that, given the ubiquity of shrines recalling in various ways the Jerusalem pilgrimage experience and the availability of indulgences associated with those and other shrines, it was not necessary to physically visit Jerusalem.78 As the
number of travel and pilgrimage accounts dealing with Jerusalem indicates, however, any
78 For an excellent recent analysis of one family of Jerusalem pilgrims who constructed a family Jeruzalemkapel see, Mitzi Kirkland-Ives, “Capell Nuncapato Jherusalem Noviter Burgis: The Adornes Family or Bruges and Holy Land Devotion.” Sixteenth Century Journal 39 (2008), 1041–1064.
decline in actual numbers of pilgrims should not be taken as evidence for a lack of interest
in pilgrimage generally or in Jerusalem and Jerusalem pilgrimage specifically.
Further, as was seen with Grimmenthal, the anti-pilgrimage arguments of the
reformers certainly had some effect. In the 1530s Greffin Affagart, a Catholic nobleman
from Maine in northern France, lamented the decline of the Jerusalem pilgrimage in much
the same language as had the accountant at Grimmenthal. Though the journey was
dangerous, Affagart admits, it was actually less dangerous in his time that it had been at
various points in the past. For Affagart the real reason for the decline was more sinister:
“since that nasty rake Luther has come to power with his accomplices, and also Erasmus . . .
many Christians have retired and cooled, especially the Flemings and Germans who formerly were more devout in travelling than all the others.”79 Whatever their influence, the reformers’
condemnations of pilgrimage were in themselves nothing new and did not lead to a
complete cessation of local and regional pilgrimage even in Protestant lands. Protestant
criticisms did, however, change the tenor of the discourse on pilgrimage such that any
Protestant who wanted to publish an account of his pilgrimage needed to justify
themselves. Any Protestant author wishing to give an account of travel in the Holy Land
had to negotiate a path between the undeniable religious significance of the place, its
spiritual magnetism, and the maledictions of the reformers. From the Protestant pilgrim-
authors’ narratives, that defense can be divided into two general and overlapping
categories: First, direct responses to specific criticisms, and second, furtherance of
confessional aims through travel and pilgrimage. Holy Land pilgrimage and its expression
79 Greffin Affagart, Relation de Terre Sainte 1534-1535 (Paris:Lecoffre, 1902), 20-21. “. . . mays depuys que ce meschant paillard Luther a regne avec ses complices et aussi Erasme . . . plusieurs chrestians n’en sont retirez et refroidiz, et principallement les Flamans et Alemans qui soulloient estre les plus devotz a voyager que tous les autres.”
in print continued and even flourished in the early modern period. Lutherans and Catholics did perform such pilgrimage, but there were important differences between them and between early modern pilgrimage and medieval pilgrimage that helped to define and harden confessional boundaries, while also, perhaps unintentionally, underscoring commonalities. Like medieval critics before them, Lutheran authors were concerned with the how’s and why’s of pilgrimage. Protestant pilgrim-authors developed and promoted attitudes toward Jerusalem pilgrimage that responded to and answered the criticisms of the reformers, and in so doing continued a tradition of broad-minded, personal, observational, and inclusive pilgrimage that had begun in the last two centuries of the medieval period.
Part I, Chapter 2
Protestant Pilgrimage
From at least the fifteenth century on, humanist authors across Europe touted the educational benefits of travel. The authors of apodemic literature gave detailed advise to travelers and potential travelers on the do’s and don’ts, how’s and why’s of long-distance travel. The ultimate point of travel, in their estimation, was to round out the education of noble and/or wealthy young men, preparing them for service to their city, prince, or state.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the curriculum of this educational travel was not as set as it would become in later periods with the development of the “Grand Tour,” but the goal was largely the same.1 The lessons of experience would be used at home to
advance the interests of the individual traveler, his family, and his community. Lutheran
pilgrim-authors express a variety of motivations for travel as well as opinions of its
benefits. Generally, their initial impetus for travel did not have to do with religion or
spirituality, but with their worldly, social duties. In leaving Europe for the East they were
fulfilling responsibilities rather than running away from them. And they were also not shy
about admitting to a curiosity for seeing and experiencing the wider world. They well
recognized the material and spiritual benefits of travel even outside pilgrimage.
1 The start of what can properly be called the Grand Tour is the subject of some debate, but does not concern us here. For more see, Jeremy Black’s works, France and the Grand Tour. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); Italy and the Grand Tour (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003); The British Abroad: The Grand Tour in the Eighteenth Century (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992); as well as Michael Brennan, The Origins of the Grand Tour: The Travels of Robert Montagu, Lord Mandeville (1649-1654), William Hammond, (1655- 1658), and Banaster Maynard (1660-1663) (London: Hakluyt Society, 2005); James Buzard, “The Grand Tour and After (1660-1840),” in The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing, ed. Peter Hulme and Tim Youngs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 37-52; Edward Chaney, The Evolution of the Grand Tour: Anglo-Italian Cultural Relations since the Renaissance (Portland: Frank Cass, 1998); Sara Warneke, Images of the Educational Traveler in Early Modern England (Leiden: Brill, 1995).
Spiritual Benefits of Travel: The Pilgrimage-ness of all Travel
In his preface, the physician and botanist Leonhard Rauwolf focuses most of his attention
on the non-religious aspects of the journey, suppressing the importance of the pilgrimage
in his narrative. He starts off by saying that ancient philosophers had already noticed that
merchants were often adept at “inquiring into the liberal arts” because of the opportunities
provided by their profession “to visit foreign lands and peoples, over water and land.”2
There are also numerous examples, he says, of students of the “liberal and good arts”
traveling “arduously in rain or snow, through unsafe wilderness and over the wild sea . . .
holding all such as slight” to study with “highly learned teachers.”3 Rauwolf displays his
own “liberal arts” education in quoting Plutarch’s biography of Solon and Diogenes
Laertius’ biography of Plato. “Solon,” according to Rauwolf (through Plutarch), “traveled
through many foreign lands to experience all good crafts and customs.”4 Plato was an even
better example. According to Diogenes, he “went to Euclid in Megara, and to please the
Pythagorean philosophers he studied with Theodoro Mathematico in Cyren.”5 Plato then traveled into Italy and finally into Egypt in order to question the prophets and priests widely famous for erudition and wisdom. He would have traveled still further into Asia, if
2 Rauwolf, Aigentliche Beschreibung, )(ii-r, “…studieren unnd erkundigung güter künsten…” 3 Ibid., )(ii r-v, “Also auch/welche zu erkandtnuß freyer unnd güter künsten/liebliche anmühtung gewinnen unnd haben/denen seye kein ferre des wegs zu Winter oder Sommers zeiten/inn regen oder schnee/durch ungehewre wildtnussen/unnd uber das wilde Möhr mit darstreckung ihres Patrimonij, zu raysen beschwerlich/sonder halten solches alles für gering/wo sie allein der ort und enden kommen könden/da sie durch fürtreffenliche hochgelehrte Praeceptores, inn güten freyen künsten underwisen/weithumbter Lander gelegenheit/und anders zu irem fürnemmen dienstlich/erfahren mogen.” 4 Ibid., )(ii v, “Desen wir ein Exempel an dem hochweysen Philospho Solone haben/ welcher/wie Plutarchus in beschreibung seines lebens anmeldet/zu erfahrung allerley güten künsten und sitten/manche ferrne Land durchrayset.” 5 Ibid., )(ii r, “Also lesen wir auch im Diogene Läertio von Platone, das er dem Euclidi gehn Megaram, dem Theodoro Mathematico gehn Cyren…”
he had not been held up by the outbreak of war. Rauwolf provides these classical examples
as models for his own desire to travel to foreign parts and inspect the customs of the inhabitants “and through that to learn something.”6 His education as a physician and
specialist in the use of medicinal plants was his ticket.
Rauwolf first traveled widely in Germany, France, and Italy “to those places where
the study of medicine especially flourished, and further where many plants, beautifully
splendid as well as useful and essential to medicine, are found.”7 The more he learned
about medicinal plants, he says, the more he realized that eastern lands (he mentions
Greece, Syria, and Arabia specifically) held many plants useful for medical professionals in
Europe. The descriptions he read of eastern cities and landscapes, “especially in the Holy
Scriptures,” further intrigued him.8 He felt an ever increasing desire to visit eastern lands
for the dual purpose of studying the medicinal plants and also “to observe and experience
in the same lands [where these plants grow] the lives, customs, practices, laws, and
religions, etc., of the inhabitants.”9 Rauwolf evinces no clear or explicit religious motivation
for wanting to travel to the Holy Land, though mentioning the Bible does put religious
matters on the reader’s radar. When his brother-in-law, Melchior Manlich, a prominent
Augsburg merchant, asked him to undertake a journey to the East to bring back samples of
medicinal plants that might be sold on the European market, Rauwolf “accepted the often-
wished-for opportunity.”10
6 Ibid., )(iii v, “…unnd dadurch etwas zuerlehrnen…” 7 Ibid., “…alß an welichen orten das Medicinae studium sonderlich floriert, unnd sonsten vil schoner herlicher/unnd zu Medecin nutzliche auch notwendige kreüter zufinden.” 8 Ibid., )(iv r, “…sonderlich aber inn Heiliger schrifft…” 9 Ibid., “…darneben auch derselbigen Länder/Innwohner leben/sitten/gebreüche/ Ordnungen/Religion etc. zu observieren unnd warzunemmen.” 10 Ibid., )(iv v, “…habe ich die offtmalen erwünschte occasion, angenommen…”
Aside from personal individual benefits to travel, Rauwolf also believes travel to the
East can be a positive for Christendom as a whole. He makes the explicit claim that the
peoples of the East are ripe for evangelization and conversion. In showing the various
peoples and their beliefs and customs, Rauwolf says that the reader will also see “how
many good-hearted people are found who are not far from the true understanding of God and could easily be brought to righteous Christian beliefs.”11 Though evangelization was
not a traditional part of pilgrimage, he opens the door here to the possibility that the
Lutheran faith might be spread outside Europe. Significant Protestant missionary efforts
would not begin for well over one hundred years, but the fact that a Lutheran traveler
encouraged such activity in the sixteenth century demonstrates one of the ways travel to
other parts of the world could be seen as a religious effort.
In the introduction to his narrative, the Lutheran minister Salomon Schweigger
emphasizes the good that can come through travel. He gives Biblical (Noah, Abraham, Isaac,
Moses and the Israelites, the New Testament apostles) and non-Biblical examples of
travelers who, through their journeys, “propitiously serve God the Almighty, themselves,
and others.”12 Everyone benefits. Schweigger goes on to make a tight connection between
travel and pilgrimage to the extent that in a sense all travel was a form of pilgrimage. God’s
purpose in sending his people hither and thither, according to Schweigger, was one to
which many modern day travelers can relate. God put challenges, dangers, and discomforts
11 Ibid., )()(iii r, “…wievil auch guthertziger leüth befunden/so von der wahren erkandtnuß Gottes nit ferr seind/unnd leichtlich zum rechtschaffnem Christlichem glauben/ gebracht werden konden.” 12 Schweigger, Ein Newe, aii-v. “...damit er künfftig Gott dem Almechtigen/im selbst and andern können dienen.”
in the way of the traveler to “make this temporal life sour for them.”13 God wanted to show
his people that “life was only a pilgrimage and a holy journey [and that] they should
understand themselves then as pilgrims, pilgrim brothers, guests, and strangers.”14 By making this life “sour,” God instills in the traveler “a desire for eternal heavenly peace.”15
Schweigger takes the spiritual benefits of suffering argument several steps farther in
his introduction to Johann Wild’s “New Travel Description of a Captive Christian,”
published at Nuremberg in 1613.16 Echoing his own travel narrative, Schweigger claims
that the discomforts and dangers of the road, if properly understood, can be beneficial to
the Christian traveler and pilgrim. This is a fundamental principle that the Germans know
well, he says, as is seen in the common saying, “That which hurts, teaches.”17 As a captivity
narrative (Wild spent seven years as a slave in the Ottoman Empire), this work is a
particularly appropriate place to discuss the role of suffering in Christian life, and
Schweigger takes full advantage of the opportunity. He goes on for over sixteen pages
repeating essentially this same argument, often in the same words. Though he starts off
with the more worldly benefits of suffering, ultimately for Schweigger there is little
difference between worldly and spiritual. Early in the introduction he uses evidence mostly
from classical authors and pre-Christian history. He talks approvingly about the harsh
13 Ibid., aiv-v. “Mit welchem hin unnd wider reysen ohne zweiffel der liebe Gott ihnen diß zeitlich Leben hat wollen sauer machen/daß sie erkennen lerneten/daß diß Leben nur ein Walfart und Pilgramschafft wer/wie sie sich dann für Pilger/Wallbrüder/Gäst und Frembdling selbst erkennen/und daß ein anders und bessers Leben zukünfftig seye...” 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid. 16 Johann Wild, Neue Reysbeschreibung eines Gefangenen Chrsiten Christen/Wie derselbe neben anderer Gefährligkeit zum sibendem Mal verkaufft worden/ welche sich Anno 1604. anfangen/und 1611. ihr end genommen. . . . (Nuremberg: Ludwig Lochner, 1623). 17 Ibid., aii-r. “Was versehrt, das lehrt.”
child-rearing customs of the Spartans, provides illustrative Greek and Roman sayings, and retells an Aesopian fable, all with an occasional Biblical reference.18
After a few pages, however, the Nuremberg preacher shifts tack and begins in earnest his Biblical exegesis. Suffering is a test, he assures the reader. It is God’s assessment of a Christian’s faith in divine providence. Schweigger often uses forms of the German word geduld, translated as patience, endurance, or forbearance, as the proper Christian response to suffering. Schweigger finds evidence for this in the Hebrew Bible and the New
Testament. He most often cites the Apostle Paul, who, he says, endured great suffering and cruelty with patience and equanimity as he wandered the Eastern Mediterranean spreading the Gospel. Early in the introduction to Wild’s narrative, Schweigger cites, though does not quote directly from, Paul’s letter to the Philippians. There the Apostle talks about how he has learned to accept the vagaries, discomforts, and dangers of his itinerant ministry, and this, Schweigger says, is the benefit of a life anchored in a patient faith in
God’s ultimate providence. Schweigger later recalls Paul’s tale of woe from the eleventh chapter of his second letter to the Corinthians: “He had endured blows. He had been in danger. He had often been imprisoned. He had received twenty-five lashes from the Jews.
Three times he suffered shipwreck.”19 Schweigger goes on to say, however, that the sufferings of the flesh are a balm for the soul and further that suffering engenders a healthy spiritual attitude toward the world:
Although tribulation, unpleasantness, misfortune, imprisonment, servitude, the
cross, and woe seem abhorrent to the flesh and are a horror, so they are to the soul,
18 Ibid., aiii-v. 19 Ibid., biii-v, biii-r. “[E]r hab Schläg erritten/er sey in gefahr gewissen/er sey offt gefangen gewesen/er hab von den Juden empfangen fünffmal vierzig Streich/er sey dreymal gesteupt/dreymal habe er Schiffbruch erlidten.”
the spirit, and the mind good, useful, and beneficial remedies, from which men
become wise: Trouble truly gives understanding. They counteract sin. They make it
so that a man becomes the enemy of the earthly and the world, and that he reaps a
desire for eternity.20
Though Schweigger does not directly compare Wild with Paul, he is quick to point out that
the author also knows a thing or two about suffering and faithful patience. Wild provides a
model for the proper Christian response to suffering. Wild, Schweigger says, spent seven
years “in der Creuzschul” (literally “in the cross school,” meaning “in the school of suffering”), and he compares Wild’s servitude to the thirteen years the Jewish patriarch
Joseph spent as a slave of the Egyptian Pharaoh. In both cases, God intended the suffering
they endured to “purify, soften, assay, winnow, and cleanse.”21 Schweigger goes into more
detail as to how difficulties can be edifying and positively transformative. The Lord God, he
says, for over seven years held his student (Wild) in the “school of the Cross” so that he
would learn to “spell (buchstabieren) faith, patience, experiential knowledge, and hope.
Which means to learn by heart humility, meekness, submission and other pious virtues.”22
This extreme example of turning lemons into lemonade illustrates the attitude of many
20 Ibid., biii-r. “Also Trübsal/Widerwertigkeit/Unglück/Gefängnuß/Dienstbarkeit/ Creuz/und Leyden/ob es wol dem Fleisch zuwider/und ein greuel ist/so ist es dich der Seel/dem Geist/und Gemüht ein gute/nützliche/und heylsame Artzney/davon der Mensch verstendig wird/Vexatio enim dat intellectum. Sie wehret der Sünd/sie macht daß der Mensch dem irrdischen und der Welt feind wird/und daß er verlangen gewint zu dem ewigen.” 21 Ibid., biii-r. “. . .lautern/schmeltzen/prüfen/fegen/und reinigen.” 22 Ibid. “Also hat Gott der Herr in diser Schola tribulationis, in der Creuzschul diesen seinen Discipel die 7. Jar über lernen den Glauben/Gedult/Ehrfahrung//und Hoffnung buchstabiren/hindersich und fürsich decliniren und conjugiren. Item das heist die Bescheidenheit/Demut/Gehorsam und andere Gottselige Tugenden/außwendig lernen.”
Lutheran authors to the spiritual value of travel, and to the spiritual value of suffering more
generally.23
Travel and pilgrimage are so intertwined in the introduction to Schweigger’s
narrative that they cannot be separated. “Travel,” Schweigger says, “is not useless, but
rather it is quite a useful thing for the noble and common, rich and poor, learned and
unlearned . . . as the saying in Germany rightly goes: An honest man’s inheritance lies in all
lands.”24 One can learn about how best to rule a land and people by observing foreign
practices. In spiritual matters as well, travel in unchristian lands brings into sharper focus
the distinction between “Christ and Belial, light and darkness, lies and truth.”25 The plight
of captured Christians, “living under the power and tyranny of the Mahometans,” should
remind the right-thinking Christian traveler that these people “await with great longing, as once Moses was found in a stream, one who will free them.”26 The traveler will also observe
for himself the wages of communal sin. He will see “how almighty God made a mighty
people and kingdom desolate; how he ruined one people and built up another. . . There one
sees and understands the gruesome but fair, righteous anger and curse of God toward this
land, not only in Palestine, but also in Greece, Asia, and other kingdoms and lands.”27
23 For more on the Lutheran belief in the spiritual benefits of suffering, see Ronald Rittgers, The Reformation of Suffering: Pastoral Theology and Lay Piety in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 24 Schweigger, Ein Newe, bii-v. “...die Wanderschafft nicht ein unnüß/sondern ein fast nützlich ding sey/Edlen und Unedlen/Reichen und Armen/Gelehrten und Ungelehrten...daher man im teutschen Sprichtwort recht sagt: Bidermans Erb ligen in allen Landen.” 25 Ibid., biii-r. “...da sihet er Christum und Belial/Liecht unnd Finsternus/Lügen und Wahrheit.” 26 Ibid. “...geplagte unter der Mahometaner Gewalt und Tyranney/die mit grossem verlangen warten/wann einmal jr Moses im Bach funden werd/der sie erlöß.” 27 Ibid., biv-v. “Er wird auch weiter sehen/wie Gott der Sünd feind sey/wie umb des Lands Sünde willen viel enderung werden in den Fürstenthumben unnd Herrschafften/wie der
Schweigger sums up by stating that the benefits of travel are spread through the
publication of travel narratives such as this (and his own presumably), thus “contributing
to the common benefit, welfare, and uplift, but above all to the honor and praise of God.”28
Spiritual Benefits of Jerusalem pilgrimage
It seems that from both Schweigger’s and Rauwolf’s perspective, any travel could be
spiritually beneficial. So, what could be gained by going to Jerusalem specifically? In short,
according to the Protestant pilgrim-authors pilgrimage to Jerusalem can, if done correctly,
provide the pilgrim with a greater understanding of the Bible and thus of God. This
connection would certainly not bring with it quantifiable spiritual benefits as with the
Catholic practice of indulgences. The pilgrim should expect no miracles or direct blessings.
But, visiting, either physically or on the printed page, the sites described in the Bible and
associated with the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus could increase one’s
understanding of scripture and devotion to God.
Another Lutheran pilgrim and author, Hans Jakob Breüning, expresses a mix of motivations for traveling to the Holy Land in his 1612 Orientalische Reyß. He had traveled around Europe for several years and found himself in Italy and decided to visit Greece and then move on to Egypt, Arabia, Palestine, and Syria. He gives two primary motivations for his travels.29 The first, though he does not use the word, was cultural curiosity. He writes
that he had a desire to experience and observe the “inhabitants, lifestyle, religion, mores,
Allmechtige Gott mechtige Volcker und Königreich wüst gemacht hat/wie er ein Volk verderbet und das ander bauet...da man sihet unnd greiffet über diß Land den greulichen aber billichen gerechten Zorn und Fluch Gottes/nicht allein in Palaestina/sondern auch in Griechenland/Asia/und andern Königreichen und Ländern.” 28 Ibid., cii-v. “...daß es gereich beedes zu des gemeinen Nutzen Wolfahrt und auffnemen/ zu förderst aber zu Gottes Lob und Ehr.” 29 Note here that again Palestine is listed as one among several other locations with no indication of special prominence.
and customs” of these lands.30 The second reason is religious curiosity. He reports that he had always felt a great fondness toward the Holy Land. The city of Jerusalem and the area surrounding it was so constantly referred to in both the Old and New Testaments that one could not help but think about it all the time. In the midst of this explanation, Breüning adds a brief aside. He says that his fondness for the Holy Land was “doch ohne superstition”
(yet without superstition).31 He does not elaborate here, but for the contemporary reader this would have been a very clear indication of Breüning’s attitude toward the Holy Land.
His desire for visiting the Holy Land was not tainted by incorrect and dangerous beliefs concerning spiritual benefits. He contrasts his attitude with that of other authors who wrote accounts of Holy Land pilgrimage. For the most part, he says, these authors gave much attention to the indulgences available at various places in Jerusalem and around the
Holy Land from the “Römischen Bischoffen oder Päpsten” (the Roman Bishops or Popes).32
Breüning does not make any further disparaging comments about Catholic beliefs in the benefit of indulgences.
Salomon Schweigger’s motivation was based on the very Lutheran concern for
Biblical literacy. In the first chapter of his third book, writes that by visiting the Holy Land and making a personal examination thereof he hoped to “better comprehend and more accurately understand the Holy Scripture.”33 Here he emphasizes the didactic utility of such journeys both for those who make them and for those who read about them.
Schweigger expresses no concern for seeing strange peoples in exotic locales. His purpose
30 Breüning, Orientalische Reyß, ):( iiii. “Einwohner/Leben/Religion/sitten und gebräuche” 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid., ):( iii. 33 Schweigger, Ein Newe, 231. “Dieselben mir desto besser ein zu bilden und die Schrifft eigentlicher verstehen lernen.”
is to go ad fontes, to the Bible. It is also worth noting, that by emphasizing scripture,
Schweigger is also at least obliquely referring to Jesus, the word made flesh. Greater
understanding of the scriptures leads to greater understanding of Jesus’ life, death, and
especially resurrection, which in turn leads to greater faith. Though religious curiosity
motivates both Schweigger and Breüning, Schweigger takes the matter a step further by
saying that seeing the Holy Land will increase his understanding of the Bible. Breüning
does not go this far. For him, though certainly motivated by piety and devotion, seeing
Jerusalem is a less rigorous intellectual and spiritual exercise.
The idea that Holy Land travel could lead to deeper Biblical engagement was not
exclusive to travel narratives. Written by the Lutheran preacher and convert Johann Eger
and printed in Luther’s own Heimatstadt, Eisleben, in 1604, Itinerarium, das ist
Reisebüchlein: Darinnen begriffen werden die Reisen der H. Jungfrawen Marien/Josephs/vnd sonderlich vnsers Herrn Iesv Christi, von seiner heiligen Menschwerdung vnd Geburt an/biß
Er gen Himmel gefahren, is not a true pilgrimage narrative.34 Rather, it uses the stories of
travel contained in the Bible to guide readers through a mental landscape of the Holy
Land.35 In rhymed verse, Eger portrays Biblical characters as pilgrims and their travels in
the Holy Land as pilgrimages. His goal is not to encourage actual pilgrimage as much as to
encourage engagement with the Bible. In his introduction Eger claims that it was exposure
to the Bible that turned him away from papal error and therefore he is confident that the
more a Christian knows about the Holy Land, the more they will be able to engage with
34 Johann Eger, Itinerarium, das ist, Reisebüchlein (Eisleben, 1604). “Itinerary, that is a small travel book; wherein are contained the journeys of the Holy maiden Mary, Joseph, and particularly our Lord Jesus Christ, from his sacred incarnation and birth, up to his ascension into heaven.” 35 Eger’s work was also published at Leipzig in 1611. Both editions are quite rare. Only one copy of the 1604 edition is listed on VD17 and only two of the 1611.
scripture and consequently the closer he will come to God. Not having visited the Holy Land
himself, Eger cannot write a personal narrative, but he claims to have read many travel
accounts and works of geography and has compared them to scripture. The goodhearted
Christian reader should, Eger says, “take his [Jesus’] person as an example and follow after
in his footsteps.”36 This is not to say that one should literally cross land and water “as the papist priests suggest,” but rather through contemplation of Jesus’ travels one should
“learn that we are in this world also foreigners, pilgrims, and poor pilgrimage brothers.”37
Using Biblical examples, Eger wants his reader to understand human life itself as the true
pilgrimage. As he reports, in Genesis 17, the Hebrew patriarch Jacob told the Pharaoh, “The
period of my pilgrimage is 130 years,” and in Psalm 89, King David said: “Hear my prayer
Lord and listen to my cries and ignore not my tears, because I am your pilgrim and your
citizen as are all the ancestors of men.”38 To a large extent Eger and the Lutheran pilgrim-
authors take aim at the same goal from different directions. Both want their readers to
engage more fully with the Bible and therefore come closer to God, and both use travel as a
medium for that engagement.
Protestant pilgrim-authors’ stated reasons for making the trip to Jerusalem and
writing about their experiences for publication are largely consonant, perhaps surprisingly
so, with those of some medieval Jerusalem pilgrims. For example, the German monk
Theodoricus, in his pilgrim guide of the late twelfth century, wrote that he hoped that
36 Eger, Itinerarium, das ist, Reisebüchlein, 10. “…daß wir auch an seiner Person ein Exampel nemen/seinen Fußstappen nachzufolgen.” 37 Ibid. “. . . durch die papstischen Pfaffen dahin gewiesen. . . Sondern daß wir lernen/dz wir in dieser Welt auch Frembdlinge/Bilgram/und arme Walfahrtsbrüder seyn.” 38 Ibid. “Die zeit meiner Walfahrt ist 130. Jahr.” and “Höre mein Gebet Herr (spricht er) ind vernem mein schreyen/und schweig nicht uber mein Thränen/denn ich bin dein Bilgram und dein Bürger/wie aller Menschen Vätter.”
through his book his readers would “learn always to bear Christ in remembrance, and by
remembering him may learn to love him.”39 The famous Father Felix Fabri of Ulm wrote at
the end of the fifteenth century that he wanted to provide an accurate description of the
Holy Land “so that they [his readers], too, might renew their faith at the holy sites in spirit,
if not in person.”40 While not emphasizing Biblical understanding to the same extent as
Schweigger, a particularly Lutheran concern, there is a common emphasis on deepening
personal religious experience through reading a pilgrimage account. Protestant pilgrim-
authors often take a somewhat intellectual tack to the more affective tone of Theodoricus
and Fabri, but all suggest that pilgrimage to Jerusalem, whether in text or in the flesh, could
be a useful tool for spiritual growth.
Presentation of Protestant Pilgrimage
Whatever their fundamental motivations, Protestant authors of pilgrimage narratives had already answered the question of whether to go to Jerusalem and whether to write about their experiences.41 At that point, the question became how to relate the Jerusalem
pilgrimage experience for a reading audience likely and understandably suspicious of any
type of pilgrimage. In order to make their narratives palatable to their fellow Lutherans,
the pilgrim-authors and their printers distanced themselves from those traditional
pilgrimage practices that did not fit their religious outlook. One of the first things
Protestant authors and printers had to make clear was that travel to Jerusalem did not
impart any quantitative spiritual benefit (i.e. NO INDULGENCES!). This was the single most
39 My own translation from the Latin found in Libellus de Locis Sanctis, eds. M. L. and W. Blust (Heidelberg: Carl Winter Verlag, 1976), 9. 40 Quoted in Chareyron, Pilgrims to Jerusalem, 9. 41 Though, as some of the accounts were published posthumously, some authors may not have intended their works to gain as wide a readership as they ended up receiving.
potent criticism the reformers had leveled at pilgrimage and Protestant pilgrim-authors disassociated themselves from the traditional understanding of pilgrimage as a work that could earn spiritual merit. This detachment was accomplished in a variety of ways starting with the formal presentation of the books themselves.
The first thing a potential purchaser looked at was a book’s title and title page. In almost all cases, Lutheran pilgrimage accounts subordinate or suppress the pilgrimage aspects of the journey in two ways. First they do not use terms for pilgrimage in their titles.
No forms of pilgrimage, pilgrim’s journey, holy journey, etc. (Wallfahrt, Pilgerfahrt,
Pilgerreise, Heiligereise) are used. Some do use terms like “Promised Land” or “Holy Land”
(Gelobtes or Heiligen Land), but in the period these were little more than geographic terms
and give no unequivocal indication of religious motivation or outlook. Second, the Holy
Land portion of the journey is often placed within a list of other places visited. Some works
mention Jerusalem or the Holy Land specifically, others use terms like “Palestinam” or
“Judeam.” Several examples will give an idea of the range of this distancing technique.
The very first Protestant Jerusalem pilgrimage narrative, The Little Journey or Travel
Book of M. Daniel Ecklin, His Journey which he Completed from Arow to Jerusalem and the
Holy Grave, What He Saw and Endured: Together with a Short Description of the Holy Lands
and the City of Jerusalem As It Appears at This Time, was published at Basle in 1574.42 Two
editions came out the next year, the second edition’s title was unchanged, but the first
42Daniel Ecklin, Wandel oder Reissbüchlin/M. Daniel Ecklins, seiner Reyss, so er gethan hat, von Arow, gahn Jerusalem, zu dem heiligen Grab, Was er in der zeit gesehen und erlitten : Mit sampt einer kurtzen beschreibung des gelopten Landts, und der Statt Jerusalem, wie es zu dieser zeit hierumb ein gestalt hat (Basel: Samuel Apiarius, 1574). The information on the various editions of Ecklin’s work comes from Max Schiendorfer, Daniel Ecklin (1532 – 2. 1. 1564): Reise zum heiligen Grab. Nach der Druckausgabe Basel: Samuel Apiarius 1575 (Zurich, 2009).
clause of the third edition’s title was altered, placing even greater emphasis on the religious
quality of Ecklin’s destination: Journey to the Holy Grave, a Sea Journey Completed by Daniel
Ecklin, from Arow to Jerusalem and the Holy Grave.43 The change stuck. The overwhelming
majority of subsequent editions (twenty-nine between 1574 and 1803) use this title. This
indicates that the printers recognized a significant Protestant, and in this case reformed,
readership for pilgrimage narratives and wanted potential customers to recognize
immediately that that is what they held in their hands.
At the other end of the titular spectrum, it would be hard to guess from its title that
Leonhard Rauwolf’s journey to Palestine and his religious motivations are prominent parts
of his book. The title simply mentions “Judea” among several other eastern territories and does not use the more common or more religiously evocative terms “Palestine,”
“Jerusalem,” or “the Holy Land”:
Leonhard Rauwolf, medical doctor, and currently in practice in Augsburg, his
authentic description of the journey recently made to the East into the Orient,
particularly Syria, Judea, Arabia, Mesopotamia, Babylon, Assyria, Armenia, etc. not
accomplished without [sic] slight effort and great danger to himself: along with the
description of more completely beautiful, foreign, and exotic plants, along with
accompanying life-like images and also other thought-worthy matters, all of which
he inquired about, saw, and observed.44
43 “Reiss zum heiligen Grab Meerfart so Daniel Ecklin gethan hat, von Arow gehn Hierusalem zum heiligen Grab.” 44 Rauwolf, Eigentliche beschreibung. “Leonharti Rauwolfen/der Artzney Doctorn/und bestelten Medici zu Augspurg. Eigentliche beschreibung der Raiß/so er vor diser zeit gegen Auffgang inn die Morganländer/fürnemlich Syriam, Iudaeam, Arabiam, Mesopotamiam, Babyloniam, Assyriam, Armeniam, etc. nicht ohne geringe mühe unnd grosse gefahr selbs volbracht: neben vermeldung etlicher mehr gar schön frembden und außländischen
The emphasis here is very much on the East as a destination, the journey’s physical danger,
and the author’s expertise in medicinal botany. The title provides no indication of
motivation or confessional identity. Given that Augsburg was a bi-confessional city at the
time Rauwolf’s work was published, the potential reader would have had no immediate
indication of whether Rauwolf was Lutheran or Catholic.45 This could well have been an
intentional decision by the printer meant to attract, or at least not alienate, potential readers of either confession.
Both the Latin (1621) and German (1646) editions of Christoph Fürer’s narrative
consign the Holy Land journey to a relatively minor position in the title: A Journey to Egypt,
Arabia, Palestine, Syria, and other Eastern Regions; A Description of Travel into Egypt, Arabia,
Palestine, and Syria, etc.46 Hans Jakob Breüning’s (1612) title emphasizes the time he spent
in “Türkey”: The Oriental Journey of the Noble and Best, Hans Jacob Breüning, from and to
Buchenbach, as He Made with Another into Turkey, under the Turkish Sultan’s Jurisdiction
and Domain, as Well as in Europe and Africa, without any Visa or Safe Passage, Namely into
Greece, Egypt, Arabia, Palestine, the Promised Holy Land and Syria, Not without Especially
Great Danger at That Time.47 Sometimes more visually striking techniques were used to
Gewächsen/sampt iren mit angehenckten lebendigen contarfacturen/unnd auch anderer denckwürdiger sachen/die alle er auff solcher erkundiget/gesehen und observiert hat.” 45 Rheinhold Röhricht, Deutsche Pilgerreisen nach dem Heiligen Lande (Gotha: Friedrich Andreas Perthes, 1889), 267-268. 46 “Itinerarium Aegypti, Arabiae, Palaestinae, Syriae, aliorumque Regionum Orientalium; Reis-Beschreibung in Egypten/Arabien/ Palästinam/Syrian/etc.” 47 “Orientalische Reyß Deß Edlen unnd Besten/Hanß Jacob Breüning/von und zu Buochenbach/so er selb ander in Türckey/under deß Türckischen Sultans Jurisdiction und Gebiet/so wol in Europa als Asia unnd Africa/ohn einig Cuchium oder FreyGleit/ benantlich in Griechen Land/Egypten/ Arabien/Palestina/das Heylige Gelobte Land und Syrien.” It should be noted that the form of titles was not an especially strong differentiating factor between Lutheran and Catholic works. On the whole though,
highlight the relative importance of certain destinations. For instance, the title page of
Salomon Schweigger’s A New Description of Travel from Germany to Constantinople and
Jerusalem printed at Nuremberg in 1608 has “Constantinopel” printed in large, red, faux-
Arabic letters and “Jerusalem” in smaller, less ornate, black letters.48
As with Ecklin’s work, printers sometimes changed titles from one edition to
another. The title of Johann Helffrich’s 1578 narrative is “A Short and Truthful Account of
the Journey from Venice to Jerusalem, from There to Egypt, Up Mount Sinai and Then Back
to Venice.”49 The title was changed for the second edition published eleven years later in
1589: “A Short and Truthful Account of the Journey from Venice to Jerusalem, Up Mount
Sinai, Cairo, Alexandria, and Then Back to Venice.”50 On the face of it, this looks like a minor
change, but it indicates two larger trends. The first is the movement toward wrapping
pilgrimage to Jerusalem within ever wider travel and narrative contexts. The 1578 title
mentions Egypt but associates it with the religiously significant Mount Sinai. The 1589 title,
by adding the cities of Cairo and Alexandria, expands the scope of the narrative beyond the
religious. Second, it shows an increasing interest in Egypt.
For Lutheran authors, pilgrimage to the Holy Land was almost always part of a
larger secular, or at least less obviously religious, endeavor, while for Catholic authors, the
Holy Land was most often the only stated destination. For example, the Catholic pilgrim-
author Bernhard Walter’s narrative from 1609 is titled, “Description of a Journey from
Lutheran authors are less likely to place terms associated with the Holy Land or pilgrimage in prominent positions in the title than were their Catholic counterparts. 48 “Ein newe Reyßbeschreibung auß Teutschland nach Constantinopel und Jerusalem” 49 “Kurtzer und Warhafftiger Bericht/Von der Reis aus Venedig nach Hierusalem/Von danen in Aegypten/auff den Berg Sinai, und folgends widerumb gen Venedig.” 50 “Kurtzer und Warhafftiger Bericht/Von der Reis aus Venedig nach Hierusalem/Von danen in Aegypten/auff den Berg Sinai/Alcair/Alexandria/und folgends widerumb gen Venedig.”
Germany into the Holy Land of Palestine and Jerusalem. Also up Mount Sinai and from
There Back to Venice and Germany.”51 Here the purpose of the journey is made clear by the immediately understood religious significance of the listed sites, despite no mention of pilgrimage. Walter’s text is, as the title page indicates, entirely focused on describing his journey to Jerusalem. Melchior Lussy’s 1590 “Travel Book to Jerusalem” also makes the purpose of the narrative clear from the title.52 Again, Lussy’s entire narrative agrees with the title, focusing exclusively on the journey to Jerusalem and its religious significance.
Nicolas Christof Radziwill’s narrative, “The Recently Transpired Jerusalem Journey and Voyage . . . In Four Missives, Wherein Very Useful, Amusing, and Strange Things in the
Holy and Egyptian Lands Are Understood: in Many Islands, on the sea and the Nile, about the Christians, Turks, and Arabs and All Kinds of Other Contemporary Things,” printed in
Mainz in 1603, seems to occupy something of an intermediate position. From the title it would seem that his narrative promises a more expansive account of a wider-ranging pilgrimage journey than is typical for Catholic works of this period. And, Radziwill’s title is not his work’s only atypical feature. Many more exact Biblical references are printed in marginal notes than any of the other Catholic pilgrimage works. Intriguingly, Radziwill was a Polish count raised as a Lutheran, who only converted to Catholicism in late adolescence.
Though it is not possible to say with certainty, the form of Radziwill’s narrative may have
51 “Beschreibung einer Reiß auß Teutschland biß in das Gelobte Land Palestina und gen Jerusalem/auch auff dem Berg Synai/von dannen widerum zu ruck auff Venedig und Teutschland.” 52 “Reißbuch gen Hierusalem”
been influenced by earlier Lutheran pilgrimage narratives, his own Lutheran upbringing, or
some combination of both.53
One quantitative method for examining the significance of the Jerusalem journey in
a given work is to tally the percentage of total pages it takes up. Looking particularly at the
cases of Rauwolf and Schweigger there does seem to be some rough correlation between
the place of Jerusalem or the Holy Land in the title and the amount of space given to
pilgrimage in the text. In Rauwolf’s case, the size of the book’s third part, that dealing with
the journey to Palestine, is roughly the same number of pages as the second concerning
travel to Babylonia. The focus of the third part is very much on the religious significance of
the area. In fact, the text gives 163 pages out of a total 480, or 34%, to Rauwolff’s travel in
the Holy Land. On a cursory examination, as a potential reader might have made at a
sixteenth-century Augsburg bookstall, the importance of the Jerusalem pilgrimage to the overall narrative would not have been immediately apparent. In Schweigger’s text, eighty-
eight pages are given to his time in Jerusalem out of 341 total pages, or 26%. The Catholic
works of Walter, Lussy, and even Radziwill are almost entirely focused on the religious
significance of the Jerusalem pilgrimage. Ultimately, this method is of limited use, for the
narrative significance of the Jerusalem pilgrimage in the Lutheran accounts outweighs that
indicated by its place in the title or its physical presence in the text.
A marked dissonance often existed between a work’s title page and its introductory
material. In the introductions to many Protestant pilgrimage narratives the importance of
the journey to Jerusalem is highlighted more than might be expected from the title page.
53 It should also be noted that, as one might expect because of the many additional locations visited, Lutheran works are generally several times longer than those written by Catholic authors.
This is the case with Christoph Fürer’s 1646 German edition. Fürer’s text was first printed
posthumously in Latin in 1621 and then in a longer German version in 1646. Georg Richter
wrote the preface to the German edition and spends its entire fourteen pages discussing
travel to the Holy Land, hardly mentioning other places Fürer visited. Richter rehearses
some of the common arguments against pilgrimage, agrees with them in theory, but allows
that at least some pious individuals, notably Fürer, can travel to Jerusalem in a useful way.
As in many of the other Protestant works, the utility of the journey is dependent on the way
it is conducted. It is a matter of style. The pilgrim must have the proper understanding of
the endeavor. According to Richter, there is no point in chasing after God, for “wherever
you are, there God will come to you, if he will find such a safe place in your soul, that he
might live and wander.”54 But that does not mean seeing the Holy Land is entirely without
value. Richter cites Biblical and patristic sources as well as classical authors such as Vergil
to support the idea that travel, and particularly pious travel, is valuable. Richter reiterates
the argument that travel to the Holy Land can deepen one’s understanding of the Bible. For
instance, Richter says, Jerome recommended such journeys because he understood that
“one who sees the present day Jerusalem and other places in the Holy Land, can therefore
better understand the Holy Bible than others.”55
From a Lutheran perspective, Richter’s strongest argument for the defense of
pilgrimage comes from Philip Melanchthon. Though he does not cite a specific work,
Richter claims that Melanchthon wanted to see the Holy Land for himself: “As also the
54 Fürer, Reis-beschreibung, )()(iir. “wo du seyn wirst/da will Gott zu dir kommen/wann er anderst eine solche Herberge in deiner Seelen finden wird/daß er darinnen wohnen und wandeln möge.” 55 Ibid. “...weil diejenige/welche Jerusalem und andere Ort in dem heiligen Land selbst gegenwärtig gesehen/die heilige Bibel hernach besser als andere verstehen können…”
highly knowledgeable Philip Melanchthon wished that he might be free to such an extent
and have the opportunity to travel there, so that he might see where the son of God himself
wandered on the earth and in which places so many wonderful godly revelations occurred
for the benefit of the human race.”56 This is a latter-day version of the medieval devotional phrase hic locus est, expressed (secondhand, admittedly) by one of the fathers of the
Reformation and Luther’s closest associate. Richter even goes on to claim that Melanchthon was a big fan of travel and pilgrimage narratives, saying that he was particularly fond of
Bernhard von Breydenbach’s narrative. Aside from an endorsement from Luther himself, there could be no greater source of approval for Lutheran travel to Jerusalem.
Richter assures the reader that it was in the best Christian tradition, that is, “without superstition, from Christian devotion,” that Christoph Fürer made his journey to the Holy
Land.57 Richter is careful to state that Fürer always preformed his journey according to the
suggestion of the Holy Bible, a small Latin copy of which he carried with him at all times.58
He ends by again sounding a note of caution. Going to Jerusalem is a worthless endeavor if
done with a lack of understanding. Quoting Jerome again, Fürer reminds the reader, in both
Latin and German, “It is not praiseworthy to be for Jerusalem, but to live well for Jerusalem:
that is, it is not simply for going to Jerusalem that one should be praised, but rather that he
56 Ibid., “Also hat auch der hochverständige Philippus Melanchthon gewünsche/daß er so weit möchte frey seyn/und die Gelegenheit dahin zu reisen haben/damit er sehen möchte/wo der Sohn Gottes auff Erden selbst gewandelt/und an welchen Orten so viel herrliche Göttliche Offenbarungen/dem Menschlichen Geschlecht zum Besten/geschehen.” 57 Ibid., )()()(v. “…ohne Aberglauben/auß Christlicher Andacht.” 58 Ibid., )( )( )( r. “...nach Andeutung der heiligen Bibel welche er zu solchem Ende in kleinem Lateinischen Format mit sich geführt”
lived rightly for Jerusalem or behaved well with understanding and devotion.”59 One who
merely goes to Jerusalem is not worthy of praise. Anyone can do that. Rather, it is the
person who lives rightly and righteously, the one who behaves with understanding and
devotion to Jerusalem in its fullest sense, who should be praised and used as a model.
Richter further assures the reader that Fürer’s narrative is a good example and model of
this attitude.60 The work’s opening “Sonnet,” which follows Richter’s introduction, further
encourages the reader to see Fürer in this light.
You should prize the knightly man and his journey
He scorned the danger of death with heroic valor
and made the path safer for you through his diligence
So that you can read through [it] with joy and profit
and show depicted the wide, remote scene
which takes away from here and there the highest word of grace
So, you travel through the land in which you have never been.61
Fürer has done the hard, dangerous work for the reader. Safe at home, they can reap the rewards and benefits of his experience without the danger or expense.
59 Ibid., )()()(iiiv. “Non Hierosolymis fuisse, sed Hierosolymis bene vixisse, laudandum est: Das ist: Es wird nicht eben darumb jemand gelobt/daß er zu Jerusalem gewest/sondern daß er zu Jerusalem recht gelebt oder mit Verstand und Andacht sich wol verhalten.” Vorrede, 60 Ibid., )()()(iiiv. “Dessen dann dem Herrn Fürer diese seine Reißbeschreibung ein gutes Zeugnuß gibt.” 61Ibid., unpaginated. Du solst den Rittersmann/und seine Reise preisen Er hat die Todtsgefahr mit Heldenmut veracht und dir durch seinen Fleiß die sichre Bahn gemacht/ Daß du mit grossem Lust/und Nutzen kanst durchlesen/ und schauen abgebildt die weit entlegnen Ort/ so hin und her benamt des höchsten Gnadenwort. So reist du durch das Land/in dem du nie gewesen.
Another early Lutheran narrative takes essentially the opposite tack. Rather than
relegate Jerusalem pilgrimage to a subordinate position, Melchior Seydlitz’s “Rigorous
Description of a Pilgrimage to the Holy Land,” published at Görlitz in 1582, wears its
pilgrim’s heart boldly on its sleeve.62 But Seydlitz’s narrative is very different from the
other Protestant narratives discussed so far in that it is also a captivity narrative. This gives
the work a different flavor, which may account for the prominence of the act of pilgrimage
in the title. On their return to Europe, the religious loyalties of Christian captives held in
Muslim lands were suspect. There was always a question about whether former captives
had abjured their faith in captivity. There seems to have been the widespread belief that
the Turks would force their slaves to convert to Islam, although in fact the opposite was
more often the case. But the question nonetheless remained: Had the former captive
“turned Turk”? Unfortunately, nothing is known of Seydlitz aside from what he reports
about himself in the narrative. It is quite possible that he was anxious about such questions,
and placing his devotional credentials front and center may have been a way to
demonstrate religious fidelity.
Wrapping Jerusalem pilgrimage within a larger journey also implicitly countered
several earlier criticisms. Both medieval critics and the reformers had often complained
that the money used on pilgrimage would be better spent at home on the poor or providing
for the pilgrim’s family. They often also expressed concerns about the social instability, or
“liminality” to use the anthropological term, of pilgrims, with many critics equating
62 “Gründtliche Beschreibung der Wallfart nach dem Heiligen Lande.” Anne Simon reports, following Jöcher and Tobler, that earlier editions of Seydlitz’s work were printed by Apiarius at Basel in 1576, by Fritsch at Görlitz in 1580, and at Leipzig in 1581. I was only able to examine Fritsch’s 1582 (also listed by Simon) and 1590 (not listed by Simon) editions. See Anne Simon, Sigismund Feyerabend’s Das Reyßbuch deß heyligen Lands: A Study in Printing and Literary History, (Weisbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 1998), 19.
pilgrims with vagrants. Lutheran pilgrim-authors, however, were generally young, unmarried men who left their homes as part of their professional duties and thus were not irresponsible vagrants. Wrapping the religious journey within a secular journey, however, which most often had to do with fulfilling social and familial responsibilities (for business, education, military duties, or as part of a diplomatic mission), was an at least implicit response. Pilgrimage to Jerusalem was then defensible because spiritual benefits were not the ultimate motivation or goal for leaving home; secular duties were. One did not abandon one’s responsibilities in traveling, if those responsibilities were actually fulfilled through that travel. Even for those like Rauwolf who were married, travel was a fundamental part of their professional, familial, and civic responsibilities.63 Furthermore, that the pilgrim- authors’ came back and shared their experiences could be seen as a form of Christian charity. Through reading about the journeys in a narrative, Europeans who were either unwilling or unable to make such journeys themselves, could gain much of the intellectual and spiritual benefit without risking life and limb on the road. Finally, purchasing a book was far cheaper for people interested in visiting Jerusalem than going there themselves.
While the cult of the saints and indulgences were closely associated with pilgrimage generally, they were less associated with pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Protestant pilgrim- authors could justify pilgrimage to Jerusalem because that city, that holy site, was different from all other pilgrimage destinations.
63 It should be remembered that Rauwolf was traveling in his capacity as a medical doctor under the auspices of the trading company owned by his wealthy brother-in-law Melchior Manlich.
Part II, Chapter 3
Experiencing Jerusalem and the Holy Land
No other sentiment draws men to Jerusalem than the desire to see and touch the
places where Christ was physically present, and to be able to say from our very own
experience, ‘We have gone into this tabernacle and adored in the very places where
his feet have stood’ (Ps. 132: 7). . . . Theirs is a truly spiritual desire to see the places
where Christ suffered, rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven. . . . all these
[places] recall God’s former presence on earth and demonstrate the ancient basis of
our modern beliefs.1
The Holy Land Experience
The Holy Land Experience theme park opened in 2001 in that Mecca of theme parks (and
American evangelicalism) Orlando, Florida.2 The park was originally conceived and built by
Rev. Marvin Rosenthal, a Jewish convert to evangelical Christianity, as a place to bring other Jews to Christianity by showing them the connections he saw between Jewish tradition and Christian scriptures. It was not a big success. After years of financial struggle, the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) purchased the park in 2007. Since then, TBN has made the Holy Land Experience one of their main U.S. venues, and it has operated in the black.
The park has no roller coasters or log flumes, but focuses instead on providing several varieties of theatrical experience for guests. One section of the park, called the
“Jerusalem Street Market,” is meant to look like a first-century Palestinian town, and from descriptions it sounds like a Biblical version of a Renaissance festival. You can even buy
1 Paulinus of Nola, fourth to fifth centuries. Quoted in Sumption, Pilgrimage, 89-90. 2 In fact, it is immediately East of Universal Studios.
smoked turkey legs. Performers in period costume wander the streets interacting with visitors. There are also a number of shows including a communion service in a recreation of the “upper room,” and a graphically bloody reenactment of the crucifixion. There is even an empty garden tomb called the “Christus Gardens.”
From the outside this may sound like cheesy kitsch, but visitors’ reactions show a surprising depth and sincerity of feeling. In a 2010 MSNBC article, a minister from
Philadelphia visiting the Holy Land Experience with his wife, is quoted as saying, “As soon as we walked into the marketplace, we both just started crying because of the consuming presence of God that permeated throughout the place. The first thing we saw when we walked in was the re-enactment of Jesus’ death on the cross.”3 On the testimonials page of the park’s website the Solage family of Delray Beach, Florida wrote, “We loved the crucifixion.” A visitor named Phyllis from Biscayne Park, Florida wrote, “Awesome improvements! Very touched by the improvement of the crucifixion and resurrection of
Jesus!”
For a secular academic, it is almost too easy to take potshots at the Holy Land
Experience and its visitors. The term “shooting fish in a barrel” comes to mind and my own first reaction was admittedly one of mocking derision. On reflection though, we should ask ourselves whether this theme park is much different from versions of the Holy Land that were produced in medieval and early modern Europe? Is it just the cultural proximity that induces laughter and cringing at the same time? How similar is my reaction to the Holy
3 “An Orlando Theme Park of Biblical Proportions,” Bill Briggs, 12/20/2010, msnbc.com. Another Biblical theme park called Ark Encounter is in the planning stages and construction is set to start this year in Williamstown, Kentucky.
Land Experience to that of Erasmus in his satire, “A Pilgrimage for the Sake of Religion”?4
Whatever I might think, the fact is, at least some people find visiting the Holy Land
Experience emotionally moving and spiritually enriching, just as many medieval people
found benefits in their pilgrimage experiences. Aside from bridging some of the temporal
distance between then and now, on some level the existence of the Holy Land Experience
shows a continuance of the tradition of the translatio of the Holy Land.5
Jerusalem
By any reasonable historical measure, Jerusalem should not have been as important as it was. It was never on any major trade routes.6 It was never a metropolis.7 Its environment is
not particularly hospitable. It is blisteringly hot in the summer and piercingly cold in the
winter. It has little water to help green the craggy, jagged rocks of the surrounding hills. But
important it surely became. A sacred city for three of the world’s major religions. An
epicenter of sectarian violence for almost four thousand years. The location of intense
eschatological prophecy and longing. Conquered, lost, and often conquered again by nearly
every major Eurasian power as well as several minor ones, the curved and cobbled streets of Jerusalem have seen much more than their share of blood, death, and destruction. Aldous
Huxley once famously described Jerusalem as the “slaughterhouse of religions.” True as
Huxley’s words are, they do not tell the city’s whole story. A tenth-century Arab geographer
4 Desiderius Erasmus, "A Pilgrimage for Religion's Sake," in The Colloquies of Erasmus, trans. Craig R. Thompson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), 285-312. 5 It is also interesting to note that this is a primarily Protestant instance of modern translatio. 6 For a discussion of the economic situation of the Eastern Mediterranean as a whole the early modern world economy, see J. Malcolm Wagstaff, “The Role of the Eastern Mediterranean (Levant) for the Early Modern European World-Economy, 1500-1800,” in The Early Modern World-System in Geographical Perspective, ed. Hans-Jürgen Nitz (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1993), 327-342. 7 Even as of 2008 its population, including East Jerusalem, was only a little over 800,000.
better captured Jerusalem’s equivocal character: “Jerusalem is the most illustrious of cities.
Still, Jerusalem has some disadvantages. Thus it is reported ‘Jerusalem is a golden goblet
full of scorpions.’”8 Fortunately, it is not our present task to explain this ambivalence. We are more interested in its consequences, and a mercifully limited range of those consequences at that.
This section will explore the devotion to Jerusalem expressed in early modern
Protestant pilgrimage narratives. We must first, however, establish a picture of Western
European devotion to Jerusalem during the Middle Ages. The fundamental argument is that images of Jerusalem were everywhere in Medieval Europe and, similar to the translation of
saints’ relics, Jerusalem was “translated” to Europe in many forms. The simultaneous
presence and absence of the holy city, the fact that it was both a real and ideal place,
generated a creative tension that had maintained Jerusalem’s figurative place as the center
of the Christian world for fifteen hundred years.
As to the place of Jerusalem in the worldview of the reformers and the post-
Reformation pilgrimage narratives, Western European Christians, regardless of confession,
still looked to Jerusalem as a primary reference point for understanding the relationship
between heaven and earth, God and humanity. That understanding was changing, however.
A growing sense of the divine as transcendent rather than immanent led many Western
European Christians, especially those who never travelled there, to view Jerusalem as a
historical curiosity. But Jerusalem’s core of religious significance never entirely fell away.
For a city that had been the locus of contact between heaven and earth for nearly four
millennia, the religious conflicts of the long sixteenth century heightened its ambiguous
8 Quoted in Simon Segab Montefiore, Jerusalem: The Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopff, 2011), vii.
betwixt and between status. The city’s value to Lutheran authors as both a travel and literary destination lay in its ability to point back to the Bible in a way that no other pilgrimage destination could. The Holy Scriptures and the Holy Land were so intertwined for Lutheran pilgrim-authors that they became almost a single object in their narratives.
The earthly, mundane reality of the contemporary city infringed on its Biblical perfection, though even this uncomfortable disjunction was used to expound on Lutheran religious concerns.
Jerusalem as a Christian Holy City
Little evidence exists from the first two centuries of Christianity, but eschatological expectations may have mitigated Jerusalem’s importance in the early Christian worldview despite its acknowledged centrality to the Christian narrative. The emphasis from that early era was on the heavenly Jerusalem, the immanent kingdom of God, much more than the material, earthly city. This fits in many ways the state of the city in the period. It had been largely destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE, only to be rebuilt as a major regional center of pagan worship by Hadrian six decades later. It was not until Constantine’s reign that the earthly city of Jerusalem took on significance for Christians as a place of spiritual longing and pilgrimage destination. As John Wilkinson points out, Constantine’s transformation of Jerusalem into a Christian city was an expression of both Christian and imperial victory, signaling “that Jerusalem was once again to assume an international role, this time as a place of pilgrimage for Christians throughout the world.”9 Jonathan Z. Smith concurs and expands, observing:
9 Quoted in Colin Morris, The Sepulchre of Christ in the Medieval West (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 42-43.
Constantine created, for the first time, a Christian ‘Holy Land,’ laid palimpsest-like
over the old, and interacting with it in complex ways, having for its central foci a
series of imperial-dynastic churches. It was a venture made possible at least as
much by the Hadrianic ‘erasure’ of elements of the past as it was by the discovery of
new modes of Christian topographical significance. In this process, what
Constantine accomplished with power and wealth was advanced by rhetors like
Eusebius who built a ‘Holy Land’ with words.”10
And it was during the fourth century that Christian writers began tempering their message of divine transcendence, creating a larger space for the active veneration of holy places within the ambit of Christian worship. During this period, Palestine, with Jerusalem at its center, was transformed into a patria communis for all Christians.11
But there was always a tension in Western Christian thought between the spiritual significance of the events that took place in Jerusalem, a significance available to all
Christians through text and ritual regardless of location, and the material city of stone and mortar in far off, foreign Palestine. This ambiguity and ambivalence are well exemplified by
Jerome. On the one hand, he went to the Holy Land himself and used it as his base of operations for the last decades of his life, encouraging various followers to join him there.
He claimed that the best way to understand the Bible was to see the places mentioned therein. On the other hand, though, he told one correspondent that “the heavenly court
10 Jonathan Z. Smith, To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 79. 11 Norman Housley, 'Holy Land or holy lands? Jerusalem and the Catholic West in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance', in The Holy Land, Holy Lands, and Christian History, ed. R.N. Swanson (Woodbridge: Ecclesiastical History Society, 2000), 229.
stands open, alike from Jerusalem and from Britain: for the spirit of God is within us.”12 He
was also not blind to the worldly attractions of Jerusalem, writing of the city’s inhabitants
that, “there is no sort of shameful practice in which they do not indulge.”13 As Norman
Housley has suggested, “The same electrical charge which causes the Holy Land as sacred
space to provoke diverse and at times contradictory responses, endowed the Holy Land
with a remarkable attraction.”14 It was attractive, though never considered necessary for
salvation, to visit the land where the events of the Bible, both Hebrew and New Testament,
took place. Visiting Jerusalem was valuable according to Jerome, as it would be twelve
hundred years later to Lutheran pilgrim-authors, in so far as one could come to a greater
understanding of scripture. God was available anywhere, but only at Jerusalem could the
Christian come to the deepest understanding of his word.
The attraction was not just a one-way street. The Holy Land seems to have been
attracted to Western Europe as well. Throughout the medieval period, in a process John
Bossy has called “migrations of the holy,” pieces of the Holy Land made their way to
Europe.15 Most often the modes of transport were conventional. European travelers,
pilgrims, diplomats, and merchants brought sacred relics back with them from Palestine. At
other times, however, Holy Land relics found their own way to Europe by more miraculous
means, as in the case of the Holy House of Loreto, the birthplace of the Virgin Mary and the
sight of the Annunciation. It was believed that angels had carried the Holy House to the
12 Quoted in Morris, Sepulchre, 48. Morris notes that Augustine had a similar attitude toward the holy sites of Palestine. As we will see, the reformers tended to the more negative side of this spectrum, while the pilgrim-authors balanced the equation. 13 Quoted in Montefiore, Jerusalem, 153. 14 Housley, Holy Lands?, 228. 15 John Bossy, Christianity in the West: 1400-1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 145.
West at the time of the Muslim conquest of Palestine in the seventh century.16 Pieces of the
Holy Land taking up residence in Europe sanctified Europe, just as a pilgrim coming into
contact with a holy relic sanctified the pilgrim. Norman Housley among others has
suggested that the veneration felt for the geographic Holy Land was weakened by this
translatio terrae sanctae.17 On some level this may be true. The greater the number of
objects associated with the Holy Land housed in Europe, the more Europe itself became a
holy land, and the less valuable the Holy Land became. However, the constant reference to
the Holy Land through relics (not to mention scripture) at the same time reinforced
Jerusalem’s place in the medieval worldview. As Colin Morris has put it, “The arrival of new
relics is an important testimony to the continuing interest of the Latin West in the Holy
Sepulcher, Calvary, and the other holy places of Palestine.”18 The Holy Land exercised a virtually inescapable pull. It was seen as the center of the earth, the umbilicus et axis mundi.
European maps of the world throughout the Middle Ages place Jerusalem at the center.
There are many examples of this idea, but perhaps the most striking is the thirteenth
century Ebstorf map.19 Here, the earth is the body of Christ. Christ’s head, hands, and feet
are depicted along the edges of the map, and at his navel is Jerusalem.
Whether or not it is true that because of their immediate eschatological expectation,
in the words of R. N. Swanson, “The first Christians had no love for holy places,” it is
certainly the case that by the fourth Christian century locations in Palestine associated with
the life, ministry, crucifixion and burial of Jesus had become objects and destinations of
16 Housley, Holy Lands?, 231-232. 17 Ibid., 232. 18 Ibid. 19 A nice image of the Ebstorf mappa mundi can be found at: http://blog.visualmotive.com/ 2009/ebstorf-mappamundi/.
devotion and reverence.20 By the seventh century John of Damascus was calling the holy
places of Palestine “receptacles of divine energy.”21 This may not be the most theologically
rigorous statement, but it does capture a feeling that has attracted European pilgrims to
Palestine for almost two thousand years.
By the time the gospel authors were writing, Jerusalem was a very different place than it had been during Jesus’ lifetime. The Jewish Temple had been destroyed at the end of the first Roman-Jewish war in 70 C. E. and sixty years later, in 135, during another bloody war between the Palestinian Jews and their Roman overlords, the city was renamed Aelia
Capitolina after the Emperor Hadrian, whose full name was Publius Aelius Hadrianus. At that time, Hadrian began the process of transforming the city into a Hellenistic polis. This
effort was successful to such an extent that, as Colin Morris put it, within a little over a
century after the death of Jesus in a very real sense, “Jerusalem no longer existed.”22
Whether or not the early Christian community kept the memory of Golgotha’s
location during the period of Roman persecution, open worship was difficult and
dangerous. This fact, along with the destructions and remakings of the city, encouraged the
development of an ideal and idealized Jerusalem associated with a deep eschatological
yearning. The most commonly cited image of the ideal Jerusalem comes from passages in
the Book of Revelation(s). There are as many interpretations of these passages as there are
interpreters, but the general understanding is clear: “the city ruined by the Roman armies
20 R. N. Swanson, The Holy Land, Holy Lands, and Christian History (Woodbridge: Ecclesiastical History Society, 2000), xvii. 21 Quoted in Robert Wilken, The Land Called Holy: Palestine in Christian History and Thought (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 253. 22 The name seems to have stuck quite firmly. Eusebius called the city Aelia rather than Jerusalem in the fourth century and the Arabic name in the seventh century was “Iliya.” (Morris, Sepulchre, 5.)
would be replaced by a new one, the eschatological Jerusalem where the saints will dwell in triumph.”23
Further, the different but in many ways complementary view developed that
Jerusalem had become universalized with the death and resurrection of Jesus. Even before the destruction of 70 C. E., Paul had written in his letter to the Galatians, that “the present
Jerusalem . . . is in slavery with her children, but the Jerusalem that is above is free and she is our mother.” (Gal. 4: 25-26) The site of worship, the house of God, was no longer fixed in a single location, but present wherever a community of believers gathered.24 The earthly, geographically bound Jerusalem was, on this line of thought, at most a symbol for or mirror image of the universal, heavenly Jerusalem, pictured as part of an apocalyptic future and a communal present. As Melito of Sardis wrote in the middle of the second century: “The
Jerusalem below was precious, but it is worthless now because of the Jerusalem above . . .
For it is not in one place, nor in a little plot that the glory of God is established, but on all the ends of the inhabited earth his bounty overflows.”25 Eusebius regarded the earthly city even more caustically. In the fourth century he wrote: “To think that the formerly established metropolis of the Jews in Palestine is the city of God is not only base, but even impious, the mark of exceedingly base and petty thinking . . . Its gates are now deserted and destroyed . . . The city of God is clearly . . . the godly polity throughout the world. It is the church of God which is the greatest city fit for God.”26 The Jerusalem of the Hebrew Bible, the Jerusalem of Jesus, was gone, superseded by a spiritual Jerusalem made manifest
23 Morris, Sepulchre, 13. 24 As Matthew 18:20 says, “For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.” 25 Morris, Sepulchre, 14. 26 Ibid., 15.
wherever and whenever Christians came together in worship. This was a Jerusalem for a new, more open covenant bound neither by genealogy nor geography, but open to believers wherever they happen to be. Jerusalem had itself become a pilgrim. Over a millennium later, the Protestant reformers would reaffirm Eusebius’ and Melito’s picture of Jerusalem.
As we will see, the antique echoes in the sixteenth-century Reformation.
Such a view of a universal Jerusalem was not entirely incompatible with the idea of
holy places, however, and in a sense even opened the possibility for them to flourish. If God
is everywhere, he can also be anywhere. This divine ubiquity cannot be underestimated in
the spread of Christianity into Western Europe.27 On the surface, however, it would seem to
diminish the importance of the Palestinian Holy Land in the Christian worldview. Jerusalem
is no longer necessary. Its usefulness outlived. “In [the Carolingian] programme of liturgical
renewal and church building there was no sharp separation between three constituent
elements: heavenly Jerusalem, the holy places where God had wrought salvation, and the
splendid new churches raised to the honour of Christ. All were expressions of the new
Jerusalem. . . . There were manifold links between the Holy Sepulchre and the theology and
liturgy of the Western Church during the Carolingian renaissance.”28 Such views were surely too esoteric for most believers, however, bound in a physical body in a physical world. For most Christians, Jerusalem was still the earthly site of the most important events in human history. This made Jerusalem and Palestine Christianity’s geographic anchor. But
Christianity also had a strong universalizing tendency that minimized the significance of particular locations or at least opened up the range of possible significant locations. The
27 See Peter Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200-1000, 2nd edition, (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), 93-122. 28 Morris, Sepulchre, 119.
proliferation of pilgrimage shrines throughout Western Europe during the Middle Ages and
especially those associated with Jerusalem provides a dramatic illustration of this
movement.
The other side of that tension, European attraction to the city of Jerusalem, is
exemplified by the Holy Land crusade. In discussing the impetus for the first crusade, John
Cowdrey has pointed to the importance of the Pope’s ownership of Holy Land relics.29
Rome was not Jerusalem, but its association with Palestine was strong and much of its sanctity came in one way or another from its association with Jerusalem. On one level, the
Pope was the successor to the apostle Peter who had participated closely in the seminal events of Jesus’ life and ministry in Palestine. The Pope was also closely linked through the relic collection with the Emperor Constantine and his mother Helena. Further, the Papal
Basilica of the Lateran was home to a vast number of relics associated with Jerusalem, such
as the scala sancta.30 A pilgrims’ guide to the Lateran from around 1073 recounts stories of
Constantine and Helena’s activities in Jerusalem as well as giving lists of relics that were
brought to Rome from the Holy Land. During Urban II’s recruitment efforts, fragments of
some of these relics were distributed to church foundations across France, thus further
spreading, in a process of pars pro toto, Jerusalems. There are a number of important links
in this chain of association that should be spelled out clearly. These relics, used to dedicate
churches and altars, were provided by the Pope, the Bishop of Rome. As Cowdrey suggests,
those who want to understand the formation of the crusading mentality “should not
29 Herbert Cowdrey, Popes, Monk, and Crusaders (London: Hambledon Press, 1966), 25. 30 The “holy stairs,” also known as the “stairs of Pilate,” are said to be the stairs Jesus ascended on his way to be judged by Pontius Pilate.
overlook how, in the Lateran palace and thanks to Constantine and his mother, the popes
lived in the midst of relics of the Holy Land and Jerusalem.”31 Jerusalem was everywhere.
In the century leading up to the first crusade concern for Jerusalem was growing.
The numbers of Holy Land pilgrims increased along with interest in relics associated with the passion and new forms of monumental architecture that imitated aspects of the Holy
Sepulcher.32 In the eleventh century Rodulfus Glaber wrote that “an innumerable multitude
from the whole world, greater than anyone could have hoped to see, began to travel to the
Sepulchre of our Saviour at Jerusalem. . . . and this was something that had never happened
before, numerous women, noble and poor, undertook the journey. Many wished to die
before they returned to their own lands.”33 The eleventh century was a time of particular
interest in the Holy Land, and this interest helped spur an enthusiasm for Holy Land
crusading that would mark the following centuries.
Plans and attempts to capture Palestine from Muslim control are the most obvious
manifestations of medieval Europe’s devotion to the Holy Land. From the eleventh century
into the sixteenth, the recovery of Jerusalem was a pervasive cultural desire. For medieval
people, in the words of Maurice Powicke, crusade “was inseparable from the air they
breathed.”34 This connection to Jerusalem was stimulated and encouraged by the spread throughout Europe of relics associated with the Holy Land. It was a case of pars pro toto, a
part of the Holy Land standing for its whole.
31 Quoted in Morris, Sepulchre, 149. 32 Ibid., 139. 33 Ibid. 34 Quoted in Housley, Holy Lands?, 235. Though Powicke was referring here to the thirteenth century specifically, the idea can be justifiably applied more broadly.
At least from the Carolingian period, there was a common idea that the secular nobility was meant, in the words of Alcuin, “to defend with arms the holy church of Christ on all sides from the incursion of the pagans and devastation of the unbelievers.”35 We are only interested here in the development of theories of just warfare in so far as they illuminate the place of the Holy Land in the worldview of the eleventh and succeeding centuries. There were rarely if even any qualms expressed about fighting non-Christians whatever the immediate reason, and there is ample evidence for consistent papal support for warfare against Islamic forces in the western Mediterranean and Iberian Peninsula.
There are, however, few indications that the protection of the Holy Land was much on the
Papal radar until the pontificate of Urban II (1088-1099).36 Urban’s precise motivations, those of the first crusaders, and just when the capture of Jerusalem became a goal have been much debated over the last century of crusade scholarship and are not especially important for our purposes. It is important, however, that whatever the original intentions, whether to “rescue” Jerusalem or merely aid the Byzantines in the wake of their crushing defeat at the hands of the Seljuk Turks at the Battle of Manzikert (1071), by the Council of
Clermont in 1095, returning Jerusalem to Christian hands had become the overriding goal.37 In their charters and letters those who had taken the crusader vow called themselves “Jerusalemers and soldiers of Jesus Christ.”38 Ultimately, motivations for
35 Quoted in Morris, Sepulchre, 165. 36 See ibid., 165-172. 37 The historiography on the motivations for the first crusade is far too immense to rehearse here. I am taken with Morris’s speculation that Urban’s choice of Piacenza for the Council of 1095, the precursor to the more well known Council of Claremont, is significant of his mindset at the time. Piacenza had pilgrimage connections with the Holy Land that went back to the sixth century, and a monastery dedicated to the Holy Sepulcher existed there from the tenth century. See Morris, Sepulchre, 175. 38 “nos Hierosolymitani et milites Iesu Christi” (Morris, Sepulchre, 177).
crusade were various. As Colin Morris has put it, “Urban had proclaimed a pilgrimage . . . to
Jerusalem which was designed to relieve the suffering churches of the East, to deliver
Jerusalem from pagan oppression, and to win pardon or ‘indulgence’ for those who responded to the call.”39 Attempts to recapture Jerusalem may have been a new feature of
European thought, but it would come to be, despite its many failures in practice, one of the defining features of the medieval and early modern periods.
Jerusalem as a captive city remained a focus for the European imagination for centuries. Norman Housley has convincingly shown that the goal of “liberating” Jerusalem from Islamic rule never entirely abated. In the late medieval and early modern periods, there were still calls, admittedly less frequent and taken less seriously, for Holy Land crusades.40 Of more significance were ideas that put the retaking of Jerusalem within a larger framework of crusade against the Turks. A few examples must stand for a significant body of evidence in support of this point. In 1439 John Torcello, a Greek “theorist of anti-
Turkish crusade,” claimed that the capture of the Holy Land would occur within a month of the defeat of the Turks.41 Ten years later the Bishop of Chalon-sur-Saone, Jean Germain, delivered an address before Charles VII claiming that once the Turks were expelled from
Greece and the land routes to the Holy Land were once again open:
The [Mamluk] sultan, afraid of losing his lordship, will consign and hand over to the
Christians . . .the holy city of Jerusalem, together with strongholds, ports and routes
on the Syrian littoral, Jaffa, Acre or some other which the Christians could rebuild
39 Ibid., 178. 40 Norman Housley, The Later Crusades: From Lyons to Alcazar (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 45-46. 41 Ibid., 46.
for their passages and voyages, with safe conduct to conduct pilgrimages to Syria,
Arabia and Egypt, without paying any sort of tribute or charge.42
Christopher Columbus saw his attempts to find a western passage to India at the end of the
century as a part of a larger mission to provide the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and
Isabella the funds to pursue a Holy Land crusade that would once and for all place the
sacred sites of Palestine back in Christian hands.43 At the cessation of hostilities between
France and England in 1508, Pope Leo X saw an opportunity for a Holy Land crusade: “Be
glad and rejoice, O Jerusalem, since now your deliverance can be hoped for!”44 There were
also calls for extending and capitalizing on the Christian victory at Lepanto in 1571 by
moving on Jerusalem.45 Jerusalem had clearly not been forgotten. Its role in the crusading movement had changed, however, and this change is analogous in some ways to the change in Jerusalem’s role in pilgrimage. Just as the pilgrimage goal of Jerusalem was, especially in
Lutheran works, increasingly presented as an aspect in a wider journey, the goal of
‘liberating’ Jerusalem from Islamic rule was now conceived of as a much hoped for consequence of a larger and more urgent battle against the Turks.46
42 Norman Housley, Documents on the Later Crusades: From Lyins to Alcazar (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 142. 43 While there is a great deal of controversy over the authenticity of this letter, there is no question concerning its printing history. Whether Columbus actually wrote the letter or not is less important here than the fact that the letter, whoever wrote it, appeals to a crusading sensibility. 44 Quoted in Housley, Later Crusades, 47. 45 Ibid. 46 Ibid., 48. With the loss of the Holy Land and the fall of Acre in 1291 the re-recovery of Jerusalem again became a hot topic in Europe and the literature of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries reflects this interest with an important difference from earlier examples of crusading literature and exhortation. See, Antony Leopold, “Crusading Proposals” in The Holy Land, Holy Lands, and Christian History, ed. R. N. Swanson (London: Boydell, and Brewer, 2000), 217-227.
Indeed, the connection between fighting the Turks and crusade could go the other
way as well. In 1584, the Frankfurt printer Sigismund Feyerabend published a collection of
German pilgrimage narratives, entitled Reyßbuch deß heyligen Lands. He ended his preface
to the volume by making a powerful call for a crusade against the Turks. This was a crusade
with a difference, however, and an important difference for understanding the place of the
Holy Land in the early modern worldview. Rather than the liberation of Jerusalem, as might
be expected in a work filled with pilgrimage narratives, Feyerabend is more interested in
the liberation of Christian captives held by the Turks than he is in the liberation of
Jerusalem.47 Controlling the physical space of Jerusalem was now less important than
controlling Christian souls. In Feyerabend, the significance of the Jerusalem pilgrimage
narratives has more to do with displaying a general, non-confessional, united Christian
piety that might be employed or directed toward combating the Turkish threat.
Jerusalem in and under Islam
The question of what the Holy Land signified for Christians was complex . . . [and] it
was given new dimensions and relevance in the sixteenth century by the religious
issues cast up by the discoveries and conquests in the Americas, and by the claims of
sectarians during the Continental Reformation. No aspect of medieval thinking
47 Anne Simon, Sigmund Feyerabend’s Das Reyssbuch dess heyligen Lands (Weisbaden: L. Reichert, 1998), 70. Aside from a significant fear of Turkish military aggression, a topic that has received a great deal of scholarly attention, there was also great concern that Christian captives might be forced to abjure their faith and convert to Islam. Indeed, two of the narratives in the Reyßbuch, those of Melchior Seydlitz and Albrecht of Löwenstein, deal with just this issue. Both men spent several years in Turkish captivity, and much of the impetus behind their narratives seems to be demonstrating their Christian fidelity.
about religious belief was more versatile than that of the Holy Land, none less
susceptible to a constant interpretation.48
Some sense of the complexity of the understanding of Holy Land can be gathered from the
“definition” of Jerusalem given by Cassian in the early fifth century. Jerusalem was known,
according to him, “historically as the city of the Jews; allegorically as the church of Christ;
anagogically as that heavenly city of God, which is the mother of us all; tropologically as the
soul of man.”49 The city was, and continues to be, many things to many people, all at the
same time. A better recipe for conflict would be hard to imagine.
With the following pages on the status of Jerusalem in the Ottoman administrative
system, I want to get behind the set piece of Ottoman Jerusalem as it appeared to the
pilgrim-authors to show something of the inner workings, dynamics, and development of the city of which the protagonists in our story would have been only dimly aware. Oded
Peri makes the convincing case that the overall effect of Islamic rule over the Christian Holy
Sites in and around Jerusalem was to keep them accessible to all Christians without regard to the specifics of religious identity. Jerusalem is usually considered to be the third holiest city in Islam after Mecca and Medina and the so-called Question of the Holy Sites has been at the center of three-way disputes between Islamic rulers and their administrations, the many and varied Christian sects that make claims on the city, and the Jewish population whose ancestors established it as a religious center four millennia ago.
1517 was an eventful year. In Western Europe it saw the opening salvoes of the
Reformation. In the Islamic Middle East and North Africa the once mighty Mamluk Empire fell to the steady roll of Ottoman expansion. Both events would form the background of the
48 Housley, Holy Lands?, 228-229. 49 Quoted in Morris, Sepulchre, 100.
journeys and writings of the pilgrim-authors. After 1517, for the first time the Ottoman sultan governed a predominately Muslim empire and he ruled the lands where the three great monotheistic religions began. “Although the Christian Holy Sites had been in Muslim hands since the seventh century, except for the interludes between 1099-1187 and 1229-
1244 when they were held by the Crusaders, the Ottomans were far more threatening to the West than the Mamluks, and their possession of these sites intensified Pope Leo X’s efforts to organize a crusade.”50 Even with a flurry of diplomatic commotion, it was not to
be. Despite the threat, there was very little political will on the part of European rulers to
unite against the Ottomans. The Venetians were unwilling to break their agreements with
the Sultan so soon after gaining them in a bloody and expensive war just four years
previous. The Hungarian king had also recently concluded a peace treaty with the Sultan
after years of costly cross-border skirmishing. The Poles renewed their treaty with the
Ottomans in 1519. And of course there was the continual struggle between the French
crown and the Habsburgs for predominance in Europe. As the Ottomans were learning, for
the foreseeable future the leaders of western Christendom were unlikely to put aside their
differences long enough to mount any kind of sustained resistance to Ottoman expansion.51
As Peri has concluded in his study of the Ottoman administration of Jerusalem,
“ensuring the accessibility of the Holy Sites to all Christians regardless of origin or church,
and irrespective of friend or foe, was one of the most important tenets of Ottoman policy in
the Question of the Holy Sites. . . Any disruption of the pilgrim traffic would damage both
the state’s revenue from the pilgrim fees and the public-political goals they supported
50 Caroline Finkel, Osman’s Dream: History of the Ottoman Empire, 1300-1923 (New York: Basic Books, 2005), 112. 51 Ibid., 112-113.
financially. Besides, the very presence of pilgrims in Jerusalem and their consumption of
various goods and services was of tremendous importance to the economy of the city. It is
therefore not surprising that the central government in Istanbul deemed it necessary to
remove all obstacles that might conceivably deter pilgrims from visiting Jerusalem and the
Holy Sites.”52 That said, as the pilgrimage narratives make clear, the system was not perfect and pilgrim-authors constantly complain about what they saw as burdensome fees, taxes, and bribes imposed by Ottoman officials of all ranks at essentially every location.53 There
was a tension between the long-term interest of the Ottoman central administration to
promote pilgrimage and the short-term interest of local officials to squeeze as much as they
could from each passing pilgrim. It is particularly striking, and surprising from the
perspective of most European historiography on this subject, that the qadis or judges
representing the Ottoman central government very often sided with pilgrims who made
official complaints of excessive taxation, often awarding damages to the Christian
pilgrims.54 The Ottoman state had at least three concerns here both religious and practical.
First, according to the Quran, Christians were to be protected as “People of the Book.”
Second, they were an important source of income for the province. And third, the Ottoman
state did not want to jeopardize trade relations with western European states.
52 Peri, Christianity Under Islam, 193. 53 In both the pilgrimage narratives and the European historiography there is an often expressed assumption that the Turks held a particular grudge against pilgrims from western Europe, or thought them richer than other pilgrims, and that is why Western Christians were charged more in taxes and fees. While there may be some truth to these assumptions, the reason stated in Ottoman texts is a bit more mundane. The differential tax assessment was based on the use of Ottoman maintained and secured roads (Peri, Christianity, 165). 54 Ibid., 195.
The fact that the money received from pilgrims visiting the Holy Sepulcher was, at
least in the late sixteenth century, used to pay for the recitation of Quran at the Dome of the
Rock is interesting. None of the pilgrim-authors in this study seem to have been aware of
this. Actually, this practice established the fees as a pious foundation, a vakıf. This was
meant by the Ottoman administration as a way of trumpeting the benefits of Christian
pilgrimage among the more conservative elements of the Muslim community in Jerusalem,
who thereby had a vested interest in the continuance of Christian pilgrimage to the Holy
Sites. Somewhat paradoxically then, supporting Christian pilgrimage to Jerusalem also
supported Islam. In cases where conflict on such matters arose, the judgments usually
supported the rights of the pilgrims to be taxed within the bounds of established law and
custom. There are cases, however, when Ottoman officials made judgments in favor of
Christian complainants that went beyond and even against established law and custom. For
example, in Islamic law there was a general prohibition against Peoples of the Book
expanding their presence in Islamic lands, including building new churches or adding on to
existing ones. By the middle of the seventeenth century, however, Ottoman administrators
were allowing church expansions to the Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Armenian, and
Coptic Christians communities in Jerusalem.55 The arguments for the expansion plans were again based on the idea that the promotion of Christian pilgrimage also supported Islam, in so far as the pilgrim fees and taxes were part of the vakıf, even when this directly
contradicted Islamic law. As Peri concludes, “Ottoman policy in the Question of the Holy
55 Ibid., 198-9.
Sites seems to have been a working combination between a religious world view, political
sagacity and practical considerations of economic profitability.”56
Demographic data for the Holy Land in the sixteenth century comes mainly from
Ottoman census records known as tahrir defterleris and requires some extrapolation and
speculation to arrive at a reasonable assumption as to population numbers. According to
Amnon Cohen and Bernard Lewis, the total population of Jerusalem at the middle of the
sixteenth century was 16,068. The numbers of Christians and Jews were roughly equal at
about two thousand people each, with about twelve thousand Muslims living in the city.
Cohen and Lewis show a steady and marked increase in population from the first decade of
Ottoman rule (1517-1527) when there were approximately only 4,800 residents in total.57
The increase was probably due to internal migration from rural areas. These numbers are
conjectural, based as they are on assumptions about average household size. Cohen and
Lewis assume an average of six, though other scholars have assumed from five to seven.58
Regardless of the exact numbers, relative proportions are very clear. Muslims vastly outnumbered the Christian and Jewish populations, with Christians only making up 16.6% of the total population.
Speaking of the Christian population as a unified, homogeneous group, however, is highly misleading. The community was divided into a number of often antagonistic sects.
This antipathy stemmed at least partly from competition over the control and use of
Christian holy sites, especially the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and to a lesser extent the
Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. The tahrir defter for Jerusalem in 1562-63 note the
56 Ibid., 200. 57 Amnon Cohen and Bernard Lewis, Population and Revenue in the Towns of Palestine in the Sixteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 94. 58 Ibid., 14-15.
sectarian make-up of the city and thus give a fair estimate for the relative size of each sect.
They show that the Greek Orthodox were by far the largest Christian group in the city,
making up 55.8% of the Christian population.59 The second largest group was the Copts
(22.7%), with the Armenians and Jacobites in third and fourth (13.2% and 8.3%,
respectively).60 Interestingly, the 1562-63 tahrir defter shows 284 individual Christians categorized as “unknown.”61 This group may have included small numbers of Roman
Catholics, Maronites, and Nestorians. These numbers, it should be noted, include only those
Christians who lived in Jerusalem as Ottoman subjects. This demographic information gives
a clearer picture of the Jerusalem the pilgrim-authors encountered. European Christians in
Jerusalem were a minority within a minority, and thus the ambivalence in the pilgrimage accounts characterized by a sense of entitlement on the one hand and insignificance on the other begins to make some sense. A Christian of any sect would have certainly felt that this land was rightly part of their patrimony. The twin facts that they were forced to share the
Holy Sites with other groups who called themselves Christians, but were in essence heretics, and that the Holy Sites were under the political authority of an infidel state, would have been extremely galling. Lutheran pilgrims were a minority within a minority within a minority. They were a minority in the Latin Christian community of Jerusalem, which was itself a minority within the larger Christian population, which in turn was a minority group in an overwhelmingly Muslim city within a massive Muslim state.
59 Peri, Christianity under Islam, 21. 60 Ibid. 61 Ibid., 20. By the late seventeenth century a small number of indigenous Roman Catholics are noted in the Ottoman records. This small group most likely consisted of formerly Eastern-rite Christians converted through the missionary efforts of the Franciscans and Jesuits. There may also have been some European Christian pilgrims who decided to live out the rest of their lives in Jerusalem and took on zimmi (dhimmi in Arabic) status (tax- paying, non-Muslim subjects of the Sultan).
Status of the Christian Holy Sites
The Muslim conquest of Jerusalem resumed the interrupted development of the
Holy Sites as universal venues of worship and pilgrimage common to all Christians
regardless of the church. . . Muslim rule permitted all Christian rites to maintain
relations with their holiest sites.62
The status of the Christian Holy Sites under Ottoman rule is a multifaceted issue, but ultimately fairly clear-cut. To begin with, according to the Quran, Muslims were meant to tolerate the other monotheistic religions, primarily Christians and Jews. Islamic law enshrined this injunction in what amounted to a contractual relationship. Islamic states were to protect the persons and property of non-Muslim subjects, as well as tolerate, within certain limits, their religious practices. In exchange, non-Muslim subjects (dhimmis) agreed to fully submit to Islamic rule, at least implicitly recognize their own status as inferiors, and pay a special tax known as the jizya. Over time Islamic jurisprudence developed a codified, detailed doctrine on the status of non-Muslim subjects known as the
“Covenant of Umar.”63 The “Covenant of Umar” is a list of discriminatory and segregatory regulations that included restrictions on non-Muslim religious practice. According to the law, dhimmi communities were not allowed to build new religious buildings nor expand existing ones. Further, as to worship itself, loud or overly public displays were prohibited.
Any outdoor activities such as processions and the ringing of bells were therefore technically illicit. The other side of these restrictions is the fact that dhimmi status did
62 Ibid., 42. 63 For more on the “Pact of Umar,” see C. E. Bosworth’s essay, “The Concept of Dhimma in Early Islam,” in Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire, ed. Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1984), 37-51.
confer legal rights and recognition. Christians were a protected group under Islamic law, a
fact that cannot be over emphasized.
Islamic rulers and their administrations, however, did not always implement or
enforce the restrictions that accompany dhimmi status. Under the Ottomans, those
restrictions were circumvented in two primary ways. First, within the Ottoman legal
system, şeriat (sharia in Arabic), was augmented by a secondary system of Sultanic regulations and decrees known as kanuns, which were further generalized and compiled into codes of legislation, kanunnames. It was a highly flexible system. Kanunnames could be applied to the entire empire or just specific areas depending on the requirements of the situation. As Oded Peri has put it, “In theory, the statutes of the kanun could not supersede, let alone contradict the commandments of the şeriat. In practice, however, many kanuns . . . did just that, especially where the şeriat proved deficient or inapplicable.”64 The will of the
Sultan was also expressed through diplomatic agreements with Christian powers. From the
Islamic perspective, the world was divided into the two camps. That under Islamic rule was the “Abode of Islam” (dar al-Islam), and that under non-Muslim rule was the “Abode of
War” (dar al-harb). Ideally, Muslims were required to wage war against the non-Muslim powers of the dar al-harb until such time as they submit to Muslim dominance or convert.
Even within the şeriat, however, there is an acknowledgment that this course of action is not always practical and thus it does allow for Muslim rulers to make limited truces
(hudna) with non-Muslims when expedient. To encourage trade, the şeriat also makes provisions for members of the dar al-harb to visit and live within the dar al-Islam by
64 Peri, Christianity under Islam, 55. Also on Kanun, see “The Making of Kanun Law in the Ottoman Empire, 1300- Making, Using and Resisting the Law in European History -Pisa University Press, 2008), 65-75. 1600” by Kenan İnan, in , ed. Günther Lottes, et al. (Pisa : Plus
acquiring from any Muslim a document of safe-passage called an aman. The aman was granted for a limited amount of time, at most one year, and gave the bearer essentially all the benefits and none of the restrictions or obligations of dhimmi status.65
In practice, Muslim rulers commonly negotiated settlements with foreign non-
Muslim powers that were peace treaties in all but name. As part of a practice known as
Capitulations (imtiyazat in Ottoman Turkish), they also issued collective amans to the subjects of friendly non-Muslim governments so that those with business to conduct in
Ottoman territory might travel more or less freely.66 It was under these auspices that the
Roman Catholic Church was allowed a presence in the Holy Land. Though the Holy See itself did not have formal Capitulation agreements with the Ottomans and many western
European pilgrims who traveled to Palestine were from states that also did not have capitulatory agreements, in both cases they were covered under the collective aman granted to states with such agreements, like France and Venice.67 Sultanic edicts of the early seventeenth century concerning Venetian access to the Holy Sites of Palestine give an idea of the concerns at issue:
(a) “Citizens of the Venetian Republic and of all its allies among the Christian
states may visit Jerusalem and the Holy Sites in absolute safety. They can
come and go freely, without hindrance of any sort.
(b) The [Franciscan] monks who are settled in the Church of the Holy
Sepulcher will suffer neither from annoyance or abuse of any source.
65 Peri, Christianity under Islam, 57. 66 Ibid., 58. 67 Ibid., 59.
(c) When necessary, [these monks] may repair and restore whatever parts
they own within the aforementioned church. They are not to be
unlawfully molested for doing just that.”68
In essence these agreements recognized all western European Christian visitors as
Venetian or French subjects regardless of their actual nationality. Comparable agreements were made in diplomatic accords with the French during the same period. By the end of the sixteenth century, France had taken advantage of the declining economic status of Venice and the periodic warfare between the Venetians and the Ottomans to become the primary champion of western Christian interests regarding the Holy Sites of Palestine.
The practical expression of legal and diplomatic principals was rarely as clear-cut as the agreements suggest, however. Ottoman rulers were willing to confiscate Christian and
Jewish religious property when is suited their purposes, and did so often with the support of local Muslim populations. This was especially the case in areas like Jerusalem where
Islamic and Christian religious interests overlapped. Particularly during the period of
Islamic rule after the fall of the Crusader States, Jerusalem “emerged as one of the most sanctified cities in Islam.”69 Though Jerusalem had carried some caché in early Islam based on the Quranic story of Muhammad’s night journey (17:1) and as the original direction of
Islamic prayer, it was not until the twelfth century that Jerusalem achieved its current status as the third holiest city in Islam, after Mecca and Medina. It was in this later period also that Muslim rulers gave Jerusalem a more Islamic aspect to the detriment of its older
Christian, and still older Jewish, character. This elevation in status began during the period of Crusader control with what amounted to a Muslim propaganda effort promoting the
68 Quoted in ibid., 60. Emphasis added. 69 Ibid., 64.
liberation of the city from infidel invaders through jihad. The Mamluk rulers were particularly keen to rebuild Jerusalem in the model of a Muslim holy city and with their penchant for grand construction projects they substantially altered the look of the city from its earlier Christian form. To accomplish their aims, the Mamluks were not shy about appropriating Christian churches and turning them into mosques or building new mosques on the remains of former Christian edifices. “When the Ottomans arrived in Jerusalem
(1517) after 250 years of Mamluk rule, not much of its Christian past and character remained.”70
The Holy Sites of Palestine, particularly the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and the
Church of the Nativity, were in an awkward situation. They were the most religiously significant places in Christianity but they were located in a Muslim city. Despite this, primary control of the most important Christian sites remained in Christian hands and under the protection of the Muslim rulers for all but a very brief period in the eleventh century.71 Less important non-Muslim religious sites could be and were taken over by
Muslim authorities in all periods, but the mostly hands-off policy dictated by Islamic law and tradition was followed for the most significant sites. Justification for appropriating non-Muslim religious sites was usually based on a suggestion, true or not, that the site in question had at some time in the past been Islamic and taking it over thus restored its original and proper identity. There was never any explicit distinction made between more and less significant non-Muslim sites, between those sites that might come under threat
70 Ibid., 65. The Ottomans made similar urban alterations through appropriation of Christian buildings in their other territories, Constantinople not least of which. Even in Jerusalem after 1517, the Ottomans made some changes. The “eviction” of the Franciscans from Mount Zion in the early sixteenth century is only the most famous case. 71 Ibid., 67. The Fatimid Caliph al-Hakim ordered the destruction of the Holy Sepulcher in 1009.
and those that would not, but there was an implicit understanding that in practice some
sites were literally sacrosanct. A Sultanic edict of 1589 stated that since the Christian
residents of Jerusalem had willingly submitted to Muslim authority on both occasions when
the city had been conquered, “their sanctuaries were left in their hands, and due
guarantees were given to ensure their existence and functioning.”72
When the exigencies of a situation warranted, the Ottoman state was willing to take over Christian churches. Given their political and economic dominance in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it might be assumed that they could have at least placed greater restrictions on the Christian use of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and the Church of the
Nativity had they wanted to. Why then did they not? There must have been more to it than just the restrictions of the şeriat or the diplomatic agreements with foreign powers, and there were likely a number of concurrent and mutually reinforcing reasons. The first is that
Muslim powers tended to look at the religious relationship between Christianity and Islam as a competition. This helps explain why the Umayyads built the Al-Aqsa rather than simply destroying the Christian site. The mosque’s gleaming golden dome, the most recognizable architectural monument in the Old City to the present day, acts as a counterbalance to the
Church of the Holy Sepulcher. The juxtaposition of the Al-Aqsa with the non-Muslim religious edifices of the city emphasized Muslim hegemony.
Sultan Süleyman also treated Jerusalem as a showcase for his power and influence.
The heterogeneity of the city was a selling point in this regard, because “here he could
72 Ibid., 69. It is worth noting here that by this logic the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem might well have been taken over, as it, much more than the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, was a site for Christian and Muslim pilgrimage. For more on this point, see Peri, Christianity under Islam, 70.
advertise his splendour to a diverse audience.”73 The Sultan had a massive wall built around the city, added mosques, had an aqueduct along with nine public fountains built, and refurbished the Dome of the Rock with new glazed tiles. Süleyman’s wife, Roxelana, who had probably been born a Circassian Christian, endowed charitable foundations in the city, including one known as the “Flourishing Edifice” which had “a mosque, bakery, fifty- five room hostel and soup-kitchen for the poor.”74 As Caroline Finkel put it, “The public works [Süleyman and Roxelana] sponsored served to inform Muslim observers that
Jerusalem was now an Ottoman city, albeit one that owed a debt to the Islamic rulers of the past.”75 Second, far from reducing the prestige of the Sultan, the presence of the most important Christian holy sites in Ottoman territory could be seen as increasing his status.
Not only was he the protector of Islam and its most holy sites of Mecca and Medina in
Arabia, but he was also the protector of Christianity. Third, control of Christian sites gave the Ottoman authorities a powerful bargaining chip in negotiations with Christian powers.
There was always a threat of restricted or prohibited access to holy sites.
Increasing Islam’s footprint in the city while at the same time maintaining a
Christian presence demonstrated Islam’s victory and superiority over Christianity. On a more mundane level, the Ottomans, despite their economic and military strength, were not insensitive to the potential of a unified western Christendom and were thus reluctant to provoke European powers. Though never perfect, Muslim states generally protected and supported Christian claims to the Holy Sites of Palestine. Further, it was in the Ottomans’ best interests to maintain a balance between the various Christian groups vying for control
73 Finkel, Osman’s Dream, 150. 74 Monefiore, Jerusalem, 304. 75 Finkel, Osman’s Dream, 150.
of the city’s holy sits. As Oded Peri points out, “inasmuch as this was a claim of Christendom as a whole and not just of a certain church, the Muslim state seems to have guarded it even better than the Byzantines or the Crusader states, each of which is known to have promoted the interest of its own church in the Holy Sites, to the exclusion of the others.”76
Ironically, it was Jerusalem’s Muslim rulers that maintain the city’s “catholicity.”
Though the Ottoman state clearly wanted to protect the Christian Holy Sites of
Palestine, the local Muslim inhabitants did not always share this goal. There was a more or less popular feeling that the Christian Holy Sites should be expropriated for Islam. The great Ottoman travel writer Evliya Çelebi visited the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in 1648 and wrote, “After having strolled around, I retired to a hidden corner where I prostrated twice in worship and performed the duty of prayer. I ended with a supplication to God: would that this place be of the Muslims! Then I got out.”77 Popular resentment led to some harassment of Christian visitors and inhabitants. Very often the matter was settled locally through Christians paying what amounted to protection money to local power holders.
Occasionally, however, when they felt particularly put upon, Christian authorities made official complaints to the central government in Istanbul. Even in cases where the local
Muslims were basing their actions on Islamic law and tradition, when they carried their actions to extremes the central government often ruled in favor of the Christians.78
For the most part, there seems to have been little conflict between the Christian sects of Jerusalem and the Ottoman administration. As long as Christians practiced their religion behind closed doors, the Ottomans were not overly inclined to meddle in their
76 Peri, Christianity under Islam, 75. 77 Quoted in ibid., 76. 78 Ibid., 78-85
affairs. There was one Christian group whose religious behavior did cause problems, however. Unlike the other Christian sects, Roman Catholics, as represented in Jerusalem by the Franciscans, performed regular public processions through the streets of the city, thus contravening the mandates of the Covenant of Umar. From complaints lodged with the
Ottoman authorities, it seems that this practice annoyed some of the city’s Muslims. The procession marking the annual Palm Sunday celebration was particularly galling. As Oded
Peri describes the scene, “Palm branches in hand, chanting psalms and hymns, with their abbot mounted on a donkey right in their midst, the Franciscan monks and a host of
European pilgrims would reconstruct and stage this glorious evangelical act in a solemn procession that descended the Mount of Olives, crossed the Valley of Jehoshaphat, ascended toward the Temple Mount, circumvented the walls, and entered Jerusalem through the Gate of Zion.”79 Another description comes from one of the Muslim complaints:
The Franciscan monks who live in Jerusalem conduct their abbot mounted on a
donkey from the nearby village named al-‘Aziriya to the city of Jerusalem. As they
march before and behind him spreading their garments in the way, they display
their rituals in public, and raise their voices in heresy. Doing this they climb up the
Mount of Olives; then they go down and up again into Jerusalem. Here they get into
the city through the Gate of Zion bearing the crucifix in the open, where everybody
can see it.80
The Muslim complainants felt that the procession was a direct and intentional insult and this placed the Ottoman authorities in a difficult position. The actions of the Franciscans clearly did violate Islamic law, but there were also capitulary agreements in place that
79 Ibid., 86. 80 Quoted in ibid.
allowed the European Christians a good deal of latitude in the practice of their religion.
Further, the capitulations were an integral part of the larger Ottoman diplomatic program and officials of the state were wary of breaching them. The Ottoman government’s response was as effective as it was ambivalent. Indeed it was effective because it was ambivalent. Instead of ruling in favor of one side over the other, separate and contradictory edicts were transmitted to both sides that “simultaneously sustained the protests of the ardent advocates of the şeriat as well as the acts of those who violated it outright.”81 The desired effect was accomplished. The status quo persisted until the middle of the seventeenth century when, in hopes of gaining favor with the French as renewed conflict with Venice threatened, a decree was promulgated clearly granting the Franciscans permission to conduct public processions.82 In this situation, as in many others, the
Ottoman state responded to inter-religious and sectarian conflict with pragmatism above all.
Early modern European pilgrims were not walking into quite the lion’s den they thought. The dangers of visiting Palestine were no doubt many. Ship wreck, disease, piracy, and enslavement were all distinct possibilities for the pilgrim. Official or institutional
Ottoman enmity, however, was not in fact a major difficulty for Jerusalem pilgrims. The
Ottoman state wanted, indeed financially required, Christian pilgrims to continue visiting
Jerusalem and pay the taxes and fees about which nearly every pilgrim complained incessantly in their narratives.
81 Ibid., 87. 82 Ibid., 88.
Part II, Chapter 4
Arrival
Many medieval pilgrim-authors describe their first sighting of Jerusalem from the top of
Mount Gihon, often called Mons Gaudii, the Mountain of Rejoicings, in highly emotive terms.
This is understandable for several reasons. First, they had achieved the goal of a long,
expensive, uncomfortable, and dangerous journey. Second, they were seeing for the first
time the site of, from their perspective, the most important events in the history of the
universe. Laid out before them were the places where God had made himself most manifest
in the world and would also return in the last days to establish his heavenly reign on earth.
This was a big deal. Finally, expressing such emptions in writing demonstrated the pilgrim-
author’s piety. It showed the reader that the pilgrim-author had travelled to Palestine for
the right reasons, establishing their pilgrimage bona fides.
The fourteenth-century Book of Margery Kempe describes the English mystic’s first sighting of the city thusly:
And so they went forth into the Holy Land till they might see Jerusalem. And when
this creature [Margery] saw Jerusalem, riding on an ass, she thanked God with all
her heart, praying him for his mercy that like as he had brought her to see this
earthly city Jerusalem, he would grant her grace to see the blissful city Jerusalem
above, the city of Heaven. Our Lord Jesu Christ, answering to her thought, granted
her to have her desire. Then for joy that she had and the sweetness that she felt in
the dalliance of our Lord, she was in point to 'a fallen off her ass, for she might not
bear the sweetness and grace that God wrought in her soul. The twain pilgrims of
Dutchmen went to her and kept her from falling, of which the one was a priest. And
he put spices in her mouth to comfort her, weening she had been sick. And so they
helped her forth to Jerusalem. And when she came there, she said, "Sirs, I pray you
be not displeased though I weep sore in this holy place where our Lord Jesu Christ
was quick and dead.1
Though Margery Kempe may not be the most representative example, she does
demonstrate the depths of emotion some pilgrims felt on seeing Jerusalem for the first
time. Felix Fabri was similarly moved when he reached the summit of mons gaudii later in the fifteenth-century:
When we beheld with our eyes the long-desired holy city, we straightway
dismounted from our asses and greeted the holy city, bowing our faces to the earth,
first greeting her King, the Lord God, with the sign of the cross, and, then addressing
her in these words, or words like these: "Hail Jerusalem, city of the Great King, glory
and crown of the whole earth, joy and delight of the believer's soul. O Jerusalem,
Jerusalem, arise, lift up thine eyes round about and see all these pilgrims, thy sons,
who have come together from the uttermost parts of the world, who, still are coming
in hosts that they may see thy brightness, and the glory of the Lord risen upon thee...
When we had finished our prayer we remounted our asses, having our eyes full of
tears and our cheeks wet with joy. The priests and monks among us all together
began to sing Te Deum laudamus. . .2
1 The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 6th Ed. Vol. 1. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1993). Accessed through: http://www.luminarium.org/medlit/kempe4.htm. 2 Fabri, Felix. The Book of Wanderings by Brother Felix Fabri (Circa 1480-1483 A.D.) trans. Aubrey Stewart. 2 vols. London: Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society, 1896. Accessed through: http://faculty.colostate-pueblo.edu/beatrice.spade/seminar97/fabri/fabri4bb.htm. (280).
In Ludwig Tschudi’s 1519 account, not printed until 1610 in the Catholic city of Freiburg am Breissgau, the author describes his pilgrimage company’s first view of Jerusalem very much as his fifteenth-century predecessors did: “As we now see the longed for city, all of us pilgrims fell from our donkeys to our knees on the earth to pray and give thanks to God, that he granted and allowed so mercifully to see this joyful view. We forget all the great struggle and effort we suffered as we traveled to this place from our own lands and we thought we had overcome it all.”3
Such emotive responses have often been seen as a ubiquitous and distinguishing feature of medieval pilgrimage piety, something that separates medieval pilgrimage from the supposedly more secular, touristic journeys of later centuries. But even medieval pilgrims did not always choose to express themselves in this way. Santo Brasca, a Milanese pilgrim who went to Jerusalem a few years after Fabri, wrote simply that, “God willing, at an early hour we reached the Holy City of Jerusalem, almost dead of heat and thirst.”4
Bernhard von Breydenbach, who wrote one of the most popular pilgrimage narratives of the fifteenth century, says that the pilgrims in his company were very happy to see the Holy
Land from their ship, but very much in contrast to his traveling companion Fabri, he lets the first view of Jerusalem pass without a mention.5 Admittedly, Santo Brasca and
Breydenbach were not religious mystics like Kempe or regular religious like Fabri, but they nonetheless represent a significant segment of the pilgrimage population. Their lack of
3 Tschudi, Historische Beschreibung, 117. “Als wir nun begierlich Statt sehen/fielen wir Bilger aber all/von stundan/von unsern Eseln auff die Erden kniede/zubetten unnd Gott zu danken/das er unß deß fröhlichen anblicks/so gnädigklich hat zusehen vergundt und verhenget/wir vergessen aller grosser mühe unnd arbeit/so wir biß dahin/auß unsern Landen zu reysen/erlitten haben/und gedunckt unß/wir hetten alles uberwunden.” 4 Pietro Casola, Canon Pietro Casola’s Pilgrimage to Jerusalem, M. Margaret Newlett, trans. (Manchester, University of Manchester Press, 1904), 244. 5 Breydenbach, Heilige reysen gein Jherusalem, Bii. Also, Breydenbach, Peregrinatio, Bii-v.
emotion should not be taken, and to my knowledge has not been taken in the scholarship
on pilgrimage, as a sign of any damning lack of piety. Piety should not be seen as an
either/or phenomenon. Kempe, Fabri, Santo Brasca, and Breydenbach occupy different
places along a spectrum of the expression of piety and they all undoubtedly saw themselves
as true Christian pilgrims.
Early modern Catholic pilgrim-authors are generally more reserved than their
medieval counterparts, but still express profound emotions on their arrival at Jerusalem.
Peter Villinger, who traveled to Jerusalem in 1563, described his first sighting of Jerusalem
thusly: “Then we made our way up the rough path to the mountain’s summit, and as we
came to the highest point we were able to see the holy city of Jerusalem. We were all very
happy, giving God thanks and praise that he had helped us get this far. . .”6 Though less
loquacious than Felix Fabri or Margery Kempe, Bernhard Walter expressed similar
sentiments, writing that, “[N]ow the pilgrims reached the summit from which one can see
the holy and longed-for city Jerusalem, and immediately each pilgrim would get down from
his mule and with a humble heart fall to his knees to give praise and thanks to God the
Lord, that he allowed them to arrive healthy and alive, and that they were allowed to see the place which many kings pray to see but are not allowed.”7 Occasionally, pilgrim-authors
place their thanksgiving set piece inside the city. The Polish nobleman Nikolas Christoph
6 Villinger, Bilgerfahrt, 41. “Darnach seynd wir ein hohen Berg unnd rauhen Weg auffgefahren/unnd als wir zu oberst hinauff kamen/da mochten wir die heylige Statt Jerusalem sehen/deß wir all hoch erfrewet/Gott Lob und Danck sagten/der uns biß dar geholffen hat. . .” 7 Walter, Beschreibung Einer Reiß, 32.“So nun die Peregrini die höhe erreicht/von welcher man die heilige und gewünschte Stadt Hierusalem sehen kan/so wölle alsbald ein jder Peregrin von seinem Esel abstehen/und mit demuutigem Hertzen auff die Knie nieder fallen/Gott dem Herrn groß Lob unnd danck sagen/das er ihne frisch auch gesundt dahin gelait/unnd das Orth zu sehen vergunt/ welches viel Könige zusehen begeret/aber solches nicht erlangen mögen.”
Radziwill is one example. In the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, he writes, “We immediately
fell to our knees and sang Te deum laudamus, thanking God the Lord for such a blessing,
that he allowed us to come in good health to the holy sites on which His feet had stood, our
salvation to perform.”8 The affective piety displayed by the post-Reformation and post- tridentine Catholic authors is certainly toned down.
Turning to the works of Protestant pilgrim-authors we also see a range, though
narrower, of expression. Daniel Ecklin, the first Protestant pilgrim-author, heightens the
tone of his prose when announcing his arrival at Jerusalem: “As one numbers the years
since the incarnation of Jesus Christ the Son of God, in the year 1553, in June, on the
twenty-ninth day of that month, early in the morning, about the sixth hour, in the twenty-
first year of my life, I arrived in the holy, in all the world well-known and renowned city
Jerusalem.”9 The personal significance of this event for Ecklin is clear, as is the fact that the personal significance is a result of the location’s religious significance. Explicitly figuring the year as counted from “the incarnation of Jesus Christ the Son of God” reminds the reader that this is Jesus’ city. Most other Protestant pilgrims simply mention being happy or joyful on arriving at the city. For instance, Johann Helffrich, exercising his usual emotional restraint, said that he and his fellow pilgrims were “very pleased” to come over a
hill and see the holy city of Jerusalem below them.10 Salomon Schweigger wrote, “The same
8 Radziwill, Hierosolymitanische Reyse, 52. “In der Kirchen seyndt wir zum ersten auff unsern Knie gefallen/das Lied Te deum laudamus gesungen/Gott dem Herr für ein solche Wolthat gedankt/das er uns an die Heilige Orter/in welchem seine Füsse gestanden haben/unser Seligkeit zu wirken/in gutter Leibs gesundheit hett lassen kommen.” 9 Ecklin, Reiß zum heiligen Grab, Di-r. 10 Helffrich, Kurtzer und Warhaffter Bericht, Fi-v. “Als wir nun auff die Höhe des gemeldten Berges kommen/und für uns ligen sahen die heilige Stadt Hierusalem/darob wir sehr erfrewet...”
day around the second hour after midday we arrived at Jerusalem with joy” (mit freuden).11
It should be noted that in both of these examples, the pilgrim-authors do not say explicitly why they were happy. Was it because they were finally seeing with their own eyes the city of Christ? Were they just happy to be able to rest after a long and arduous journey? A mix of both? Johann Wild, who was a prisoner and slave held by a Turkish master at the time of his visit to the city, writes, “The next day we came, around vesper time, to Jerusalem, in the year 1608 in the month of May, about which I was very happy, both that I could see the holy city, and that we rested there after ten days on the road.”12
Several Protestant pilgrim-authors make no special mention of their arrival at all.
This overall lack of emotional expression might be understood as representing a dearth of religious feeling, supporting the idea that Protestant visitors to the Holy Land were more tourists than pilgrims. But two things should be kept in mind. First, we have what the pilgrim-authors say about their experience. We do not have the experience itself. We should be very careful not to mistake rhetoric for reality. It is entirely possible that
Protestant pilgrims felt highly emotional in the moment, but were later reticent about expressing that emotion for an audience. Second, given Protestant religious attitudes toward sacred space, it is no surprise that Protestant pilgrims are not especially emotive on their arrival at Jerusalem.13 This lack of expressed emotion is in fact consonant with their
11 Schweigger, Ein Newe, 287. 12 Wild, Neue Reysbeschreibung, 132. 13 For recent research on the subject of spatial conceptions in the Reformation, see Bridget Heal, “Sacred Image and Sacred Space in Reformation Germany,” in Sacred Space in Early Modern Europe, ed. Will Coster and Andrew Spicer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 39-59; and Andrew Spicer, “What kind of house a kirk is: Conventicles, Consecrations and the Concept of Sacred Space in Post-Reformation Scotland,” in Sacred Space in Early Modern Europe, ed. Will Coster and Andrew Spicer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 81-103.
particular religious perspective. The physical, material city of Jerusalem was not important from the Lutheran doctrinal perspective. Generally, Protestant pilgrim-authors are very careful to avoid any hint that they saw the Holy Land as sacred in itself. The Holy Land, though important, was not “holy” for Protestants in the same way it had been for medieval pilgrims and continued to be for Catholic pilgrims. It had no salvific power. It was not itself a relic that could extend spiritual gifts. It was holy because of its association with the only true relic, the Bible. The sites of the Holy Land were essentially mnemonics for a deeper engagement with scripture. Pilgrimage to Jerusalem and reading about pilgrimage to
Jerusalem was thus an extension of the Protestant concern for sola scriptura. It was not seeing the land itself that was important for Protestant pilgrims, but rather seeing and experiencing the relationship between Holy Land and holy text, the Bible.
A Ruined Land – Seeing How the Once Mighty Have Fallen
The natural environment that confronted the pilgrim-authors in Palestine was decidedly not one “flowing with milk and honey.” Even those authors who expressed some appreciation for the scenery admitted that it was a harsh landscape, dry and rocky. The small villages they traveled through were poorly built. Many of the ancient churches were in ruins or had been converted to mosques. As one scholar recently put it, “The pilgrims had come to visit the Roman Jerusalem of the Bible, and their holy pilgrimage must have been informed by the canonical and apocryphal Gospels. But it was a living, medieval
Jerusalem that first met their eyes.”14 In describing the Holy Land as they experienced it nearly all the pilgrim-authors noted the disjunction between what they read in the Bible and what they saw before them. This is not what they had been led to expect, not only from
14 Chareyron, Pilgrims, 80.
the Biblical texts, which they refer to most, but also, given the “presence” of artistic
“Jerusalems” in Europe, from the images of Jerusalem they had seen all around them from
their earliest days. Undoubtedly many of the pilgrim-authors had read previous pilgrims’
descriptions of the Holy Land and were thus prepared to some extent for what they
encountered, but it is nonetheless the case that almost to a man, the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century pilgrim-authors express a surprise bordering on disappointment.
How could this shabby, scraggly place with its dilapidated, half-ruined buildings and
decrepit old churches be the home of the savior of mankind, the King of Kings?
In his fifteenth-century pilgrimage narrative, Father Felix Fabri recounts a quarrel between two of his fellow pilgrims. One, “a dull man,” complained about the miserable state of the land, while the other, “the cleverer,” argued that it was truly “the best of lands.” As
Fabri reports it, his first inclination was to agree with the dullard: “I myself said secretly in my heart: `Lo, now! This is that land which is said to flow with milk and honey; but I see no fields to bring forth bread, no vineyards for wine, no green meadows, no orchards. Lo! it is all stony, sunburned, and barren.’” With a bit more reflection, however, he came to see the wisdom of the clever man’s argument and the answer came to him. “[T]his barrenness, drought, and roughness is the curse laid upon [the land] by God because of the breaking of
His commandments.”15 He then cites and quotes from Deuteronomy 29 in support of this
position: “The generation to come of your children that shall rise up after you, and the
pilgrim that shall come from a far land, shall say, when they see the plagues of that land,
and, the sicknesses which the Lord hath laid upon; it, and that the whole land, thereof is,
brimstone, and salt, and burning, that it is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth
15 Fabri, Wanderings. http://faculty.colostate- pueblo.edu/beatrice.spade/seminar97/fabri/fabri4bb.htm
therein.”16 In holding up the Biblical text as an interpretive lens that helps clear up apparent inconsistencies, Fabri used a technique that Protestant pilgrim-authors would come to adopt in their turn.
Fabri was neither the first nor the last to interpret the landscape and environment of Palestine in this way. In the early fourth century Eusebius wrote in his demonstratio evangelia, “Believers in Christ gather from all parts of the world, not because of the glory of
Jerusalem, not to worship in the ancient temple at Jerusalem, but that they may know that the city was occupied and devastated as the prophets foretold.”17 The region’s ruined state was a confirmation of prophecy and evidence of God’s majesty. The land was a lesson to the observer (and reader) on the wages of sin. By the mid-nineteenth century, however, the importance of the contemporary condition of Palestine had faded into the background.
Edward Robinson, a professor at Union Theological Seminary, wrote that the goal of his
“visit was the city itself, in relation to its ancient renown and religious associations, not as seen in its present state of decay and superstitious and fraudulent degradation.”18
The disjunction between the Holy Land of the Bible and that of the sixteenth and seventeenth century was still very much on the minds of Protestant pilgrim-authors. At one end of the spectrum is Melchior Seydlitz, whose narrative style in recounting the pilgrimage portion of his journey was much more observational than interpretive. Rather than emphasizing the barrenness of the land, Seydlitz actually says that it is quite fruitful despite the extreme heat. He does, however, convey a sense of ruin and decay in his descriptions of various religiously significant sites. Many he describes as “fallen down,”
16 Deuteronomy, 29.22-23. 17 Quoted in Wilken, Land, 81. 18 Quoted in ibid., xiii.
“ruined,” or “converted to a mosque.” In Rama, one of villages on the road from the port of
Jaffa to Jerusalem, Seydlitz is told that during the periods of Christian rule there were two
beautiful churches active there, but when the Muslims took over they converted the
churches to mosques.19 As he and his pilgrim party approached Jerusalem, Seydlitz says that they “came to a large ruined house next to a lovely flowing spring, where, as they say, the prophet Jeremiah lived and is said to have made his lament over Jerusalem, as one finds
in the Scriptures.”20 Seydlitz does not explain or interpret the larger meaning of the ruined state of many Christian holy sites in and around the city. He has no training in theology and is much more a reporter than analyst. But the reader nonetheless comes away with an image of the Holy Land, at least its human made elements, as degraded and decayed.
The very first Protestant pilgrim-author, Daniel Ecklin, was clear both about the sorry state of the land and its cause. Although the Bible says that the Holy Land flows with milk and honey, “it is the most unfruitful land I saw in Syria,” he says. “It is an untamed land, extremely dry, and a great wasteland wherein no one can live; nothing but mountains and valleys, all raw, stony, and brutal.”21 The inhabitants of the land are equally
unproductive. Ecklin has never found among all the Turks a “more coarse, dry, vicious and
19 “Man sagt/das bey zeiten der Christen/zwo schöner Christlicher Kirchen allda gewesen sein/aber zu Türckischer Moschken gemacht worden.” 20 “Als wir in diesem Gebirge geritten 2. Meylen/kamen wir zu einem grossen zerstörten Hause/darbey ein hübscher fliessender Brunn war/das/wie man sagt/des Propheten Ieremiae Behausung gewesen/darinner er die Klage uber Jerusalem/Wie man in die heiligen Schrifft findet/gemacht haben sol.” 21 Ecklin, diii-r. “Das Heilig gelobte Landt/so ich hab fleissig besichtiget/durchzogen und durchwanderet bin/das in heiliger geschrifft der rhum hat es fliesse von milch und honig/ist das aller unfruchtbarist Land so ich in ganzen Syria gesehen hab/ein ungeschlacht erdtrich/vil wüstinen/und grosse einodinen/darin niemands wonen kan und mag/nichts dann Berg und Thal/dieselbigen gantzen rauch/steinig und unartig.”
ignorant people than here.”22 So unproductive are the land and its people that all goods of
any value must be brought in from Constantinople, Venice, or other places. Ecklin makes it very clear that this is not simply the luck of the geographic and geologic draw, but God’s curse that creates this situation. “This land and all who live in it are cursed by God on account of the sinful will of the Jewish people.”23 Now everywhere are old buildings, broken
down walls. Only a few nasty little dwellings dot the landscape, “where perhaps there used
to be beautiful and strong towns and places where the holy people of God lived.”24 As with
Seydlitz, Ecklin does not draw any explicit lessons from the state of the landscape or
inhabitants, though the subtext is quite clear: stay on God’s good side or you and yours will
pay the price.
In other ways, Ecklin’s relationship to the Holy Land is in many ways unique among
early modern pilgrim-authors. Once in Jerusalem, he is not especially interested in the
city’s buildings, its man-made features, because they are almost all from well after the time
of Christ and are thus is some way inauthentic. He is, however, despite its desiccation,
interested in the landscape. While the manmade features of Jerusalem have no physical
connection to Christ, the geographic features certainly do. They are essentially the same as
when Jesus experienced them a millennium and a half before. “I asked little after the
buildings,” Ecklin states:
22 Ibid. “Gleich wie das land/also sind auch die so dz selb besitzend/gemeinigklich/under allen Türken hab ich kein gröbers/wüsters unartigers und unkönnenders Volck nirgend funden dann eben grad hie.” 23 Ibid. “Das ja wol diß land und alles so darinn wonet von Gott verflucht ist/umb der sünd willen des Jüdischen Volcks.” 24 Ibid. “Es ist alles voll alter Vestien und gebüwen/alte zerbroche mauren/darbey stehn jetzt zwey oder drey schlechte heußlin/da villeicht vorzeiten hüpsche gewaltige Stett und Fläcken seind gewesen/und von den Heiligen Volck Gottes bewont.”
because I was well aware that they were rebuilt a long time after the time of Christ.
But I had a great desire to explore the layout of the land: such as the holy Mount
Tabor from which Christ was glorified; the Jordan in which he was baptized; the
Mount of Olives from which he ascended; the garden in which he was captured; the
grave in which he was laid and from which he arose; these things cannot be ended
or destroyed.25
For some pilgrim-authors, describing and explaining the degraded state of the Holy
Land is fundamental to their goals in publishing their narratives. Leonhard Rauwolf, the
Augsburg physician and apothecary, says in his introduction that he hopes his work will enlighten and educate the common reader about God’s righteous wrath at human sinfulness, leading them to a better life:
Then one will read in this my Hodoeporico, how the buildings of the mightily strong
city of Jerusalem disintegrated, how Babylon lies in ashes, how other prominent
places are ruined and desolate, and that the Holy Land is fallen into bareness. Which
at once reminds the reader how the wrath of God is so fierce and consuming a fire,
that he not only did not spare the inheritance of his chosen people the Jews, but also
the most fruitful lands flowing with milk and honey, which, as one might say, had
not themselves sinned, but still damned them to bad harvests on account of the
misdeeds of the inhabitants, and turned the great cities and battlements to
25 Ibid., diiir – diiiv. “Den gebewen hab ich wenig nach gefragt/dann ich wol weiß das sie ein lange zeit nach Christo wider gebawen dise jetzige Statt Jerusalem. Aber dei gelegenheit des Landes zu besichtigen daran habe ich sondern lust gehebt/Als den heiligen Berg Thaber darauff Christus verklart ist/den Jordan darinn er taufft ist/de Oelberg auff dem er auffgfaren ist/denn Garten darinn er gefangen/das Grab darinn er gelegen und auß welchem er erstanden/dann dise ding könnend sich nicht enderen werdended auch nicht zerstört.”
wasteland and wilderness. Which then ought to remind and stimulate the Christian
particularly to atone and convert to a better life.26
The description of desolation should convince the Christian reader to live a more godly life because they now have a deeper understanding of the consequences for not doing so. The
Holy Land in its ruined state is an object lesson for all Christians.
Salomon Schweigger makes similar points in the introduction to his narrative. One of the benefits of wide travel is observing “how God is the enemy of sin.”27 The fortunes of kingdoms and peoples are in God’s hands. In travel, one sees “how on account of the sins of the land almighty God made a mighty people and kingdom desolate, how he ruined one group and raised up another.”28 But, Schweigger assures, God is not capricious. Like a good parent, he warns and threatens, following through when tested. “In the former blessed land
[Palestine], on account of the disobedience and sinful wills of the people, the land does not give forth plants, and the trees do not bring their fruit, but rather the land is in a perpetual
26 Rauwolf, )()(iiiv. “Dann so einer in disem meinem Hodoeporico lesen wirt/wie die herrliche veste Statt Hierusalem an gebäw zerfallen/Babylon gar inn der äschen ligt/andere fürnemme ort öd und unbewohnt seind/unnd das gelobte Landt zur unfruchtbarkeit gerathen/der hat sich alßbald darauß zuerinnern/wie der zorn Gottes ein so hefftig verzörendt fewr sey/das er nit allein seines zum Erbthail ausserwölten Volcks der Juden/sonder auch fruchtbaresten/ mit Milch unnd Honig fliessenden Lands/das doch also züsagen nit gesündiget/nit verschonet/sonder von der innwohner missethat wegen zum mißgewächs vermaledeyet/ die herrliche Stätt unnd Vöstungen zü ödgarten unnd wildtnussen gemachet/das dann einen Christen/sonderlich zur büß unnd bekerung bessers lebens anraytzen unnd erinneren solte.” 27 Schweigger, Ein Newe, bivv. “. . . wie Gott der Sünd feind sey . . .” 28 Ibid. “. . . wie umb des Lands Sünde willen viel enderung werden in dem Fürstenthumben unnd Herrschafften/wie der Allmechtige Gott mechtige Völcker unnd Königreich wüst gemacht hat/wie er ein Volck verderbet und das andere bauet . . .”
state of rest, in which the lands, cities, and towns lie desolate and are nothing other than
nests for worms and dens of murderers.”29
Once into his account of the Holy Land itself, Rauwolf vividly depicts the before and
after picture. Citing “the eighth chapter of the fifth book of Moses,” he says that the land
was once the richest and most productive in its “grain, fruits, wine producing vines, and all
things useful for human sustenance.”30 This was all in accord with God’s promise to his
chosen people. He promised them a land flowing with milk and honey, and their land “had
beautiful valleys, mountains, fields, and pleasure gardens, magnificently adorned with
springs and trees . . . an earthly paradise.”31 But the Jews had failed not only to recognize
Jesus as the son of God and the savior of humanity, but had ridiculed and murdered him.
For this God abandoned them, consigning them to live among the heathens. He caused their temple as well as the city of Jerusalem to be destroyed and turned their homeland to desert waste. This, according to Rauwolf, should not have been a shock to the Jews of Palestine. It had all been prophesied, and he provides the Biblical citations to prove it:
This the holy prophet Isaiah in his thirteenth chapter proclaimed to them before,
where he said, ‘See the day of the Lord comes ferocious, wrathful, grim to unsettle
29 Ibid. “Deßgleichen/daß der Allmechtige Gott das jenige/was er zugesagt/halte/ wann mann im gewesenen gelobten Lande warnimbt/wie die Göttlichen Reden und Trohung so viel gelten/wie er umb des Volcks ungehorsam unnd Sünde willen den Himmel zu Eisen/und die Erde zu Ertz macht/daß das Land gewechß nicht gibt/und die Bäum ihre Frucht nicht bringen/sondern das Land einen immerwerenten steten Feyertag helt/daß das Land/Stadt unnd Dörffer wüste ligen/und nichts dann Wurmnester und Mördergruben seyn.” 30 Rauwolf, Aigentliche Beschreibung, 324. “Dises heilige Land . . . war etwan (wie im 5 Büch Moisi am 8 zülesen) das fruchtbarste/ reicheste Land/von Getraydt/Früchten/ Weinwachs/und allem dem/was zü des Menschen leben unnd auffenthaltung gehöret.” (324) 31 Ibid. “Dann es hat schöne Thäler/Berg/Felder/unnd Lustgärten/mit Brunnen/Bäumen/ herrlich gezieret/das also dieselb wol für das irrdische Paradeyß erwehlet worden. . .”
and destroy the land on account of sin. . . This should simply be as a warning
example to us and to all men of God’s stern wrath until the final day.32
Observing and reading about the ruined state of the Holy Land was intended to help the
Christian better understand the consequences of God’s righteous anger at human sinfulness. God had even abandoned his chosen people, the Jews, removing his favor from them because of their transgressions. This fact was visibly manifest for the observer not only in the subjugation of the Jews as a people, which the Christian could see without leaving Europe, but also in the desolate state of the Palestinian land itself.
It should be noted that this was a particularly Protestant view of sin. As Susan
Karant-Nunn has put it,
The attitude of [Protestant] ecclesiastical leaders was now, more thoroughly than
before [the Reformation], that the source of human ills lay within the guilty
individual. Even collective injury, as the result of natural disaster or war, was
attributable to the heaping-up of individual transgression until it became a
collective burden, when in his wrath God brought calamity down upon his people,
including the innocent.33
Protestant pilgrim-authors saw and interpreted the Holy Land through their own peculiar
religious lens, and their descriptions thus both reflect and reinforce that vision.
32 Ibid. “. . . die ihnen der heilige Prophet Esaias an seinem 13 Capitel zuvor verkündet/da er spricht. Sihe deß Herren tag kompt grausam/zornig/grimmig/das Land zuverstören/ unnd die Sünd darauß zuvertilcken. . . Das soll billich uns unnd allen Menschen zur warnung ein Exempel deß strengen zorens Gottes biß an jüngsten tag sein.” 33 Susan C. Karant-Nunn, Reformation of Ritual: An Interpretation of Early Modern Germany (London: Routledge, 1997), 71.
Incredulity
During their stay in Jerusalem, pilgrims were shown around the city in what amounted to
tour groups, and a great deal of each narrative is spent in sometimes tedious description of
all the sites visited in and around Jerusalem. Almost without exception, the language used
in these descriptions quickly settles into a pattern: We were shown a certain chapel where
such-and-such occurred, then we were taken to another chapel where such-and-such happened, then we went to another chapel where such-and-such occurred, and so on. Into this schema, Protestant pilgrim-authors introduced a tone of skepticism, distancing themselves from traditional pilgrimage through the subtle and strategic employment of incredulity.
This tactic assumed several forms. The first might be called the reportage approach and is characterized by the use of various iterations of “our guide told us.” Hans Jakob
Breüning, for example, in his Orientalische Reiß printed at Strasbourg in 1612, mentions the place of Jesus’ imprisonment by writing, “The monks pointed out that therein the Lord
Christ sat and was held prisoner.”34 In the Latin edition of Christoph Fürer’s Itinerarium printed at Nuremberg in 1621, the author uses the word dicunt, “they say,” when talking about the place where Helena, the Emperor Constantine’s Christian mother, found the cross of Christ.35 In various other places Fürer uses the more specific form monachi dicunt, “the
monks say.” The list of examples could go on and on, but the point is that this technique
afforded the author plausible deniability, giving the impression that he took no stand on
34 Breüning, Orientalische Reiß, 227. “zeygen die Münch an, das darinnen der Herr Christus gesessen/und gefänglich gehalten.” 35 Fürer, Itinerarium, 60.
the accuracy of the attribution, but was merely passing along information as it was given to him.
Another method for subtly questioning the attribution of an item or location was the use of some form of sollen sein or sollen haben, which is best translated as “supposedly is” or “is said to be.” For example, in his account published in Leipzig in 1578, Hans Helffrich says of his time at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, “In a hole, which iron bars entirely cover, there is a piece of wood, which is supposedly a piece from the cross of Christ.”36 He continues using both the “supposedly” and the “they showed us” constructions, “On the left side of the altar, in another hole, they showed us a piece from a red marble column, also closed off with iron bars, which is said to be the column on which Christ was scourged.”37
Hans Jakob Amman, whose work was published at Zurich in 1618, describes the pool at
Siloh by writing, “Here is the supposed pool or shaft, where the angel stirred the water and the first sick person who went into the water was made healthy.”38 Further on, Amman, describing some buildings in the vicinity of the Temple complex, writes, “There supposedly the house of Pilate sat on Mount Acra.”39 Hieronymus Scheidt used a similar technique in his narrative published at Erfurt in 1615 when discussing the tree to which Jesus was bound: “in front of the church an olive tree was shown to us, where on they had supposedly
36 Helffrich, Kurtzer und Wahrhaffter Bericht, Gv. “…ein Stuck Holz/welches sol sein ein Stuck vom Creuz Christi.” 37 Ibid. “Auff der lincken Hand des gemelten Altars/in einem andern Loch/zeigten sie uns ein Stuck von einer rothen Marmelsteinen Seulen/welches auch mit wol mit eisern Steben verwahret/das sol sein von Seulen/an welcher Christus ist gegeisselt worden…” 38 Amman, Reiß in das Gelobte Land, 127-128. “…soll das Wasserloch oder Schaaft gewesen seyn/da der Engel das wasser bewegte: und der erste kranck/der darauff in das wasser kam/gesund ward.” 39 Ibid., 128. “…soll seyn das haus Pilati/auff dem Berg Acra gelegen.”
bound our Lord Christ for a long time until a decision from Annas was received.”40 Christof
Fürer, whose German narrative was published at Nuremberg in 1646, combines both they said and sollen sein forms when he writes about a particular chapel “where they say, supposedly the house of Anne, the mother of the virgin Mary, had been.”41 Fürer was especially fond of the sollen sein construction, and often piled up its use one right after the other as he did in describing the fissure in the rock: “Above on the right hand side is a large fissure in the rock, which was supposedly created at the time of the suffering and death of
Christ; at the same place it is said that the grave of Melchisedech and the skull of Adam were found.”42
Looking at Catholic pilgrimage narratives from the same period indicates that the
use of this incredulous language is a strong distinguishing characteristic between Lutheran
and Catholic authors. Catholic authors are much more likely to use straightforward,
credulous language in their descriptions. Johann Zuallart, a French-speaking Belgian
Catholic author whose travel narrative was translated into German and published in Köln
in 1607, describes the place where Jesus sweated blood: “It is a very sacred, holy, moving
yet comforting place for devoutly pious souls, in view that here the lord and savior on his
40 Scheidt, Beschreibung der Reise, Eivv. “vor der Kirchen ward uns ein Oelbaum gezeigt, daran sollen sie unsern Herren Gott so lange gebunden haben/biß sie einen Bescheid von Hanna bekommen.” 41 Fürer, Reis-Beschreibung, 183. “…da sagen sie/soll das Haus Annae/der Jungfrauw Maria Mutter/gewesen seyn…” 42 Ibid., 188. “Oben auff der rechten Seiten ist eine grosse Grufft in den Felsen/welcher zu der Zeit deß Leidens und Sterbens Christi soll gerissen seyn; daselbst soll Melchisedech begraben und Adams Habt gefunden worden seyn.” Interestingly, Leonhard Rauwolf, probably the most acerbic critic of Catholic practices among the Lutheran pilgrim-authors, is also the most credulous. He very rarely uses any of the formal devices here mentioned.
knees washed and sanctified this place with his bloody sweat.”43 The Polish aristocrat,
Nickolas Christof Radziwill, who, it should be remembered, was born Protestant and converted to Catholicism as a young adult, describes the chapel that commemorates the place where Jesus was whipped, by writing, “This chapel, belonging to the Catholics, has full remission of sins, as does the altar therein, in which lies the column of the whipping of
Christ.”44 Catholic authors as a rule do not attempt to distance themselves from or question the accuracy of the sites they visit, wholly accepting the attributions as given to them by their guides.
Lutheran expressions of incredulity imply a questioning of the traditional attributions to a relic or location, but never include a question about Biblical events themselves. Biblical events themselves are always expressed unquestioningly. This is particularly evident in the examples where a direct statement follows sollen sein, such as in the above: das sol sein von der Seulen/an welcher Christus ist gegeisselt worden. Christ was surely whipped and it may have been on this column. For the reader, such juxtaposition would have the effect, especially in its near constant repetition, of highlighting the truth of
Biblical accounts while also calling the human tradition of association into question, thus reinforcing a fundamental Protestant theological doctrine. Whether or not a particular event occurred at certain place was, from the Lutheran pilgrim’s perspective, beside the point. The bedrock of truth in the Biblical stories was not to be found in the geographic or physical locations but in Bible itself. The overriding concern was for Biblical truth, not
43 Zuallart, Bilgerfahrt in das Heilige Land, 101. “Ist ein sehr andächtig/heilig/schrecklich und doch tröstliches Ort für andächtige fromme Seelen/in betrachtung daß ihr Herr und Erlöser hie auff den knien gelegen/mit seinen bluttigen Schweiß diesen Ort gewaschen und geheiliget.” 44 Radziwill, Hierosololymitanische Reyse, 53-54. “…wie auch der Altar so darin ist/in welchem die Säul des Gegeisselten CHRISTI gelegt ist.”
historical or geographical accuracy. Visiting the places and describing those visits were merely methods of and even invitations for engagement with scripture. This might go some way in explaining why the Lutheran pilgrim-authors did not spend much energy directly challenging Catholic ascriptions.
Pilgrim-authors also call the attributions into question by interrogating their logic.
After describing the edicule and how it is entered, Solomon Schweigger notes, in a minor but telling detail, that inside the hole in which Jesus’ body was supposedly deposited after the crucifixion, there is also a marble structure that looks like a coffin. Some people think,
Schweigger goes on, that Jesus was placed in that coffin and others say that he was just laid out in the cave and that the marble structure is more of an altar. Schweigger holds with the second opinion, and he does so based on the story preserved in the New Testament
(though in this instance he does not explicitly cite book and verse) in which the disciples and matrons who come to anoint Jesus’ body see, before they enter the cave, that the grave is empty. They could not have done this, Schweigger reasonably contends, if the body had been placed inside a coffin. On the face of it, Schweigger’s weighing in on this debate may appear insignificant. However, it is a very basic example of exegesis that illustrates why
Schweigger thought journeys to Jerusalem, and books about journeys to Jerusalem, could be valuable. First of all, in an ad fontes and sola scriptura maneuver, Schweigger goes to the
Bible for his evidence. Secondly, in doing so he comes to a greater understanding, however minimally, of the scriptures. Furthermore, by concentrating with such intensity on Jesus’ grave, Schweigger emphasizes what for his Lutheran readers would have been the most important moment in the passion story, the resurrection.
Schweigger then takes up another debate, this one about whether the Edicule truly marked the site of Jesus’ interment after the crucifixion. On the one hand, the multiple destructions of Jerusalem by men (for instance Vespasian in 70 CE) and God in the form of severe earthquakes are all well attested by historians. This fact has led some, Schweigger claims, to question the historical and therefore religious legitimacy of the site. He admits that he too at first had his doubts. Certainly, the historical argument is quite compelling.
Furthermore, suggesting that the grave was not truly that of Jesus, we can imagine (though
Schweigger does not say so explicitly), might be compelling from a Protestant religious standpoint as well, in that it would be yet another issue on which Catholics were wrong, and possibly even actively deceptive.
Despite its attractiveness, however, Schweigger does not take this path. Rather, he says that he believes that the edicule does house Jesus’ actual grave. As evidence for this assertion Schweigger does not go back to the Bible as he did for the just mentioned coffin debate. Instead, he writes:
As I came into the dome such a force and fear came over me and also the men of my
company, that all the little hairs on the backs of our necks stood on end, and it
seemed that we floated between heaven and earth, and truly that we were
transported from the earth. This experience awakened in us also such a heartfelt
reverence and fervor toward Christ for prayer and thanksgiving, that it is above all
measure.45
45 Schweigger, Ein Newe, 300. “...als ich aber hinein kam in das Gewelb/ kam mich und auch die Herren aus der Gesellschafft ein solche forcht und schrecken an/ daß uns alle Härlein gen Berg stunden/ und uns bedüncket/ wir schwebten zwischen Himmel und Erden/ ja als weren wir von Erden verzuckt/ es erwecket auch in solche hertzliche andacht und eyser in uns/ gegen Christo zum Gebet und Christlicher Dancksagung/ daß über alle massen ist.”
Schweigger implies that an intense religious experience of this kind would only be possible in the very place Jesus died, was buried, and then resurrected. Only in that place could he and his companions have felt such a depth of reverence and divine connection. However improbable historically, this experience was enough to convince Schweigger that this place was indeed what so many claimed it was. In a larger sense, this ecstatic experience served the rhetorical purpose of validating Schweigger’s earlier choices, both in going to the Holy
Land in the first place, and also participating in the scheme to hide his and his Lutheran companions’ religious identity.46
Hans Jakob Breüning makes a very similar point to Schweigger’s in his 1612
Orientalische Reyß. Breüning points out that the Apostles and women could not have seen the empty grave from outside the tomb. But he goes on to claim this site as the true site of
Jesus’ grave for much the same reason as Schweigger. Everyone who comes in to this space, he says, even Turks and unbelievers, would have to admit to feeling a mix of joy, desire, fear, and awe. He even uses (borrows?) the same phrase used by Schweigger: “alle Haar gen Berg stünden.”47 He goes on:
Indeed he would have to be a wicked, ignorant man, a Christian in name only, to
come to this place, where . . . for our sins and those of the whole world, he [Jesus]
suffered and died on the stems of the cross, as on Mount Calvary, where for our
sake, for our salvation and blessedness, he arose from the dead, as here in the holy
46 One is put in mind here of that striking line from Victor and Edith Turner, “If mysticism is an interior pilgrimage, pilgrimage is exteriorized mysticism.” (Image and Pilgrimage, 7). 47 Breüning, Orientalische Reyß, 232.
grave, and not esteem it all the more in the very place, and should find in himself a
special affection.48
Again, it is the feeling of the place that moves Breüning past whatever incredulity might have troubled his mind before actually being in the place. And the reader, perhaps assailed by similar doubts, is assured that this really is THE place.
The differences between these two Protestant authors should not go without mention as they show the range of authorial voice present in this body of texts.
Schweigger’s highly personal description of his ecstatic experience is unique in the early modern pilgrimage literature, being more in line with the narrative of Margery Kempe than would be expected from a highly trained and educated Lutheran minister. He brings the reader into his experience, however briefly, in a very emotional way by describing how he himself felt when he entered the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Breüning, though making essentially the same point, does not describe his personal internal state, maintaining a narrative distance by keeping the description’s language in the third person. This is not, as will be seen, the only instance in Schweigger’s text where he goes to great lengths to bring the reader into the story of his journey.
A Bewildering Swarm of References
One of the most astonishing things that have yet fallen under our observation is the
exceedingly small portion of the earth from which sprang the now flourishing plant
48 Ibid. “Und müste ja ein Verruchter Kohloser Mensch sein/ so den Christlichen Namen zum schein/nur im maul führete/der an das Ort keme/da Christus sein Seligmacher Geboren/ alß zu Behthlehem/Da er für unser und der ganzen Welt Sünde/am Stammen deß Creuz gelitten und gestorben/als auff dem Berg Calvariae, und da er uns zu gutem/zu unserm heyl und seligkeit/widerumb von todten erstanden/als aljie im H. grab/der nit solches alles mehr in ipso loco betrachten/in sich selber gehen/und sonderbare affection bey ihme befinden solte.”
of Christianity. . . It is as much as I can do to comprehend this stupefying fact. How it
wears a man out to have to read up a hundred pages of history every two or three
miles – for verily the celebrated localities of Palestine occur that close together. How
wearily, how bewilderingly they swarm about your path!49
Though Protestant pilgrim-authors never complained as Twain does about being constantly confronted with places and relics associated with Biblical stories, their readers may well have. One of the identifying characteristics of Protestant pilgrimage narratives is their near constant rehearsal of Biblical stories and citation of scripture. These are yet further techniques for deepening the reader’s engagement with the Bible. In most
Protestant pilgrimage narratives, the second of these features stands out most obviously even to the casual reader. In Leonhard Rauwolf’s Journey into the East (Augsburg, 1583), the chapter and verse citations are integrated into the text itself. For instance, Rauwolf describes his first view of Jerusalem: “The city lies on a high hill, just as Psalm 125 attests.”50 In his next chapter, “A Simple Description of the City of Jerusalem, as It Is Yet in
Our Time, and Its Surrounding Area,” he piles up the references within his narrative:
As shown in other places in Holy Scripture, that the city lies high, as in the Book of
Acts in the eighth chapter where the angel of the Lord speaks to Philip, ‘Stand up
and go toward midday on the road, which goes from Jerusalem to Gaza etc.’ Just as in
49 Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad: or, the New Pilgrims’ Progress (New York: The Modern Library, 2003), 371. 50 Rauwolf, Aigentliche Beschreibung, 318. “Die Statt liget im hohen gebürge/wie solches der 125 Psalm bezeüget.”
the tenth chapter of Mark, ‘They were on the path and heading to Jerusalem.’ And in
the tenth chapter of Luke, there was a man who went from Jerusalem to Jericho...51
In-text Biblical citations such as these are inescapable for the reader.
Hans Jakob Breüning, in his “Eastern Journey,” printed in Strasbourg in 1612, also places Biblical citations within the narrative.52 For example, in his description of the place
where Jesus is said to have appeared to Mary Magdalene after the resurrection: “In the
other place (next to the Holy Grave) Christ is said to have met her and there he said: touch
me not, John. 30.”53 Writing about the gates that lead into and out of the city, Breüning says
of the Damascus Gate: “This is the gate mentioned in Jeremiah chapter 31, namely that it is not ruined yet will be in eternity. Just as at Zachariah 4 and 2nd Chronicles 28.”54 To give an
idea of their frequency, in the eleven pages of Rauwolf’s chapter there are at least twenty
Biblical citations, about two per page. For Breüning the average is somewhat lower, closer
to one reference per page, though he is more likely than Rauwolf to also cite non-Biblical
sources, such as Josephus.55 Some texts, such as Salomon Schweigger’s, place many
51 Ibid., 322-323. “So beweisend auch andere ort der heiligen Schrifft/das dise Statt hoch lige/alß inn der Apostel geschicht am 8 Capitel/da der Engel des Herren redet zu Phillipo, Stehe auff/unnd gehe gegen Mittag auff die strassen/die von Jerusalem gehn Gaza hinab geht &c. Item Marci am 10. Sie waren aber auff dem wege/unnd giengen hinauff gehn Jerusalem: Und Lucae am 10 Es war ein Mensch/der gieng von Jerusalem hinab gen Iericho.” 52 “Orientalische Reyß.” 53 Breüning, Orientalische Reyß, 233. “An dem anderen Ort (so dem Heyligen Grab naher) soll Christus Ihr begegnet sein/ Da er sagte: Noli me tangere, Johan. 30.” Notice here too the use of sollen sein. 54 Ibid., 220. “Diß thors wird gedacht Jeremiae. c. 31. namblich/dz es nicht ausgereut noch zerstoret werde in ewigkeit. Item Zach. 4. und 2. Chron. 28.” 55 At one point Breüning even mixes biblical and non-Biblical references. In discussing the origins of the region’s name “Judisches oder Hebraisches Land,” he writes: “Dannenhero/wie gemeldet/das ganze Jüdische oder Hebraische Land den Namen/die
citations in printed marginal notations. As with Breüning, Schweigger also cites non-
Biblical and classical sources, such as Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History and Josephus’ History of the Jewish War. The Biblical and non-Biblical, but learned, citations make these works useful as humanist texts for the common reader. On both counts, the citations make the travel narratives useful as reference works that introduce classical authors as well as encourage the reader’s engagement with the Bible.
Though Biblical references are not unheard of in Catholic pilgrimage narratives, they are much more common in Lutheran works. This fits both with the stated goals of several Lutheran authors, encouraging engagement with the scriptures, and with Lutheran doctrine generally. For Protestant pilgrim-authors, this engagement came through
comparing the contemporary Jerusalem with the Biblical accounts. For the reader, the
constancy and consistency of Biblical citations would ideally encourage textual comparison
between the narrative and Scripture. Retelling Biblical stories in any case also served the
reader’s religious education even if they did not take the extra step of opening their Bible to
the relevant passages.
Images
The Temple of the Holy Grave is a very large, broad building, that is not only the
holy grave but indeed also Golgotha, where Christ was hung on the cross, as it is
believed. The building that houses the grave is also large, round, and over seventy
feet wide, very high, open at the roof, where daylight falls from a round, wide, open
Juden aber ihren ursprungen haben/Jospehus lib. I. Antiquitatum cap. 6. Item Genesis cap. 10. & 11.” (213).
window, then the roof, which is covered, with lead stands open, larger than a round
table.56
Although not all early modern pilgrimage narratives were illustrated, enough of them were that the role of images in these texts must be considered at some length. The following analysis will consider the images along two comparative axes: comparison of similar images across different pilgrimage texts, and comparison of images with their accompanying printed text. There is a great deal that could be said about the images produced in these texts, but to keep the analysis manageable I will limit myself to two types of images. First, I will look at the very commonly used image of the exterior entry courtyard, or parvis, of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.57 The effect of these images is something akin to an establishing shot in a film, orienting the viewer and giving him visual points of reference for the textual description. Second, I will examine images of the edicule, the building within the larger church which houses the burial chamber, ending with a consideration of the curious case of Melchior Seydlitz and the Holy Sepulcher Chapel at
Görlitz.58
One thing to notice from the outset about the order of analysis here is that it goes from more to less stable. The repetition of the courtyard images in narratives over time
56 Schweigger, Ein Newe, 294-295. “Der Templum H. Grab ist ein sehr groß weit Gebeu/ also daß nicht allein das H. Grab/sondern auch die Schedelstett/da der Herr Christus ist ans Creuz gehengt worden/darinnen begriffen ist/Das Gebeu (G) darinn das Grab sieht/ist auch groß/rund/und über die 70. Schuh weit/gar hoch/oben von dem Tach herein fellet das Tagliecht/von einem runden weiten offnen fenster/dann das Tach steht offen/grösser dann ein runde Taffel/welches ist mit Bley bedeckt.” 57 According to the Oxford English Dictionary, parvis comes via Old French and Anglo- Norman from the late Latin paradisus, meaning paradise or more specifically and helpfully in this case, “the abode of the blessed.” 58 The word edicule comes from the Latin feminine noun aeducula, meaning small house (for humans) or chapel (for gods).
serves as an anchor, grounding the published texts in a historical lineage of print.
Repetition of images of the edicule (excepting that from Seydlitz’s narrative) is also a
stabilizing force, though less so here owing to the greater diversity of visual treatments. In
this case the stability, or its lack, comes more from the relative consonance of text and
image. As will be shown, the image of the edicule in Seydlitz’s text is destabilized by the fact
that it is not at all consonant with the text nor is it a historically accurate representation of
the contemporary edicule.
The Parvis
The earliest visual representation of the parvis I have found in European texts comes from
an illuminated manuscript, The Hours of René of Anjou. 59 The image was most likely
produced in 1442-43 and has been attributed to the early Netherlandish artist Barthelemy
d’Eyck.60 René of Anjou never visited the Holy Land himself, but as the titular King of
Jerusalem the sacred sites of Palestine were an important part of his noble lineage.
Although the angle is different, comparing the medieval image to a modern day photograph
of the parvis, there is little question that it is meant to depict the courtyard of the Church of
the Holy Sepulcher.61 Many features, from the arched windows, entry doors, the short
stairway leading to a small domed structure, match up quite closely. One feature that many
future images of the parvis will share is the presence of people in the courtyard area
59 The manuscript is currently held by the British Library as Egerton 1070. Record and images at: http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ record.asp?MSID=8486&CollID=28&NStart=1070 (accessed July 5, 2013). 60 François Avril and Nicole Reynaud, Les Manuscrits à Peintures en France 1440-1520 (Paris: Flammarion, 1993), no. 122. 61 Fine images of the parvis can be found at: http://www.holysepulchre.custodia.org/ default.asp?id=4100 (accessed July 5, 2013).
itself.62 The lower part of the painting is damaged but several figures can still be seen. In the upper left of the courtyard, near the doorway, two turbaned figures are seated, apparently in conversation. Just below them, a man, perhaps a Christian pilgrim, is on his knees. Below him and a bit to the right, another figure, much harder to discern, seems to be lying almost prostrate, perhaps looking at something on the ground. Moving upward and out of the parvis, an image of the Dome of the Rock is included just behind and to the right of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.63 Aside from its hexagonal form, it can also be identified by the crescent decorating the steeple. Another tower with a crescent, perhaps a minaret, is located on the far left of the image. Both of these Islamic symbols would have reminded the viewer that the most sacred sites of Christianity were in Muslim (infidel) hands.
The drawing in Gabrielle Capodilista’s pilgrimage narrative from around 1458, is also immediately recognizable as the parvis. Again, many of the identifying features are here. In the upper right of the courtyard, the stairs leading to the domed structure are depicted again, though this time the words “CALVARI LOCUS” are written immediately above.64 A column can be seen right below the stairway as in the painted image from René of Anjou’s book of hours. Immediately to the left, the building itself is identified in larger lettering, “TEMPLUM SANTISIMI SEPULCRI.” Many more figures populate the courtyard here. Some seem to be Turks or at least locals, as they wear turbans, and quite a few seem to be Christian, wearing the hoods and satchels of the pilgrim. There are a few important
62 Andres Betschart, Zwischen Zwei Welten: Illustrationen und Berichte Westeuropäischer Jerusalemreisender (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1996), 128-138. 63 This is not an accurate depiction of the relationship between the two buildings. The view of the parvis looks directly North, while the Dome of the Rock is due East from the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. 64 “The site of Calvary.”
differences. First, just to the left of the largest group of pilgrims, right next to the fold, one
of the stone tiles appears to have several crosses cut into it. Second, in the painting the
right-side of the double arched entry way is bricked in, but open in the drawing from
Capodilista’s text. Lastly, Capodilista’s image does not include the Dome of the Rock in the
background, but it does have a dome topped by a crescent shaped ornament, again
indicating that the Christian holy sites are in the hands of Muslims.
The next two images of the parvis [figures 1 and 2] come from two different editions
of Bernhard von Breydenbach’s famous pilgrimage narrative.65 Breydenbach was the dean of Mainz Cathedral and traveled to the Holy Land in the spring and summer of 1483, along with the artist Erhard Reuwich. Originally from Utrecht, Reuwich had settled in Mainz and eventually became a canon of the cathedral there. In 1486, Reuwich illustrated and printed the first edition of Breydenbach’s narrative, in Latin, with a German edition coming out within a year or so. Breydenbach’s narrative was the period’s equivalent to a bestseller, with at least twelve editions published by 1523, in French, Dutch, Spanish, along with further German and Latin editions. The illustrations became hugely influential as well and were copied by printers all over Europe, including Wolfgang Wolgemut for the Nuremberg
Chronicle. Figure 1 is from a German edition printed at Augsburg in 1488. Figure 2 is from
the Speyer edition of 1503. The 1503 image used either Reuwich’s woodblocks or else very
closely wrought copies. Oddly, the earlier image from 1488 edition seems to have been
based on Reuwich’s image but is noticeably different. The 1488 image, however, takes
essentially the same visual information and scrunches it into a much narrower frame. It is
65 It is likely that the account was actually written by a Dominican monk, Georg Roth, who was not a member of the pilgrimage party, but based on Breydenbach’s memories of the journey.
also a reverse or mirror image of the more accurate 1503. Many features similar to the
previous images are immediately apparent and need not be enumerated. Suffice it to point
out that as in Capodilista’s image, the floor tiles of the parvis have a spot marked by a cross
and surrounded by Christian pilgrims. In Reuwich’s image from the Speyer edition though,
this spot comes with a written explanation. The Latin reads, “In front of the Temple of the
Sepulcher there is a stone that marks the place where Christ bore the cross.” Also new with
this image is a title, again in Latin, reading “This is the disposition and shape of the Temple
of the Lord’s Sepulcher from the outside.”66
Moving onto images of the parvis from Protestant narratives, I want to take the images from Solomon Schweigger’s 1608 work [figure 3] and those from Hans Jacob
Breüning’s narrative of 1612 [figure 4] together. In both cases, the sections dealing with their time in Jerusalem have woodcuts of the parvis that seem at first glance to be fairly typical. As in earlier examples, both Schweigger and Breüning have several figures standing in the courtyard. In Schweigger’s particularly, it is difficult to make out whom they might represent, but one wears a turban and thus might be read as being a Muslim. A sixth figure, also turbaned, is behind the other five, in an arched doorway.67 The other four figures do
not wear any particularly distinguishing clothing and are most likely meant to represent
Christian visitors generally or Schweigger and his companions specifically. In Breüning’s
image, the figures are more easily identified. In the right half of the courtyard two turbaned
figures sit at a table with coins and a scale. Five other figures, none of them wearing
66 In the 1488 image from Augsburg, there is a place for a caption which has been left blank. The first line underneath the image has a caption in German which reads, “Vor dem tempel des heyligen grabs liget der steyn darauf Cristus viel sein creutz tragend.” It is quite likely that the 1488 Augsburg edition, coming out as it did so soon after the original publication, was a somewhat rushed job, trying to capitalize on the popularity of the text. 67 Schweigger, Ein Newe, 295.
turbans, stand around the courtyard facing the men seated at the table. Three of these
figures are obviously pilgrims. Each one carries three of the traditional visual symbols of
pilgrimage: the pilgrim’s staff, the “Jerusalem Cross” pilgrimage insignia, and a string of
prayer beads. The other two non-turbaned figures do not have the traditional symbols of
pilgrimage and are merely wearing hats and long frock-coats. In both cases, the images depict the pilgrims’ dealings with the Turkish officials who guarded and charged for entrance to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. With this, these two Protestant images renew a visual theme of the earliest images of the parvis discussed here. In both the painting from the Hours of René of Anjou and the drawing from Capodilista’s manuscript, Muslim figures are present. In Capodilista’s, it is particularly evident that the Muslim figures are dealing with money. They are shown sitting on a carpet with a bag and coins next to them, involved in what looks like an monetary exchange.68 Though the Breydenbach images have figures
of pilgrims, there are no representations of Muslims and no indication that money changed
hands before Christian pilgrims were allowed to enter. There, the emphasis is solely on the
parvis as a site of Christian worship.
The fact that the Protestant narratives of Schweigger and Breüning share this
feature with some mid-fifteenth century texts, one of which is not even a pilgrimage
narrative, and not with the later and more popular images from editions of Breydenbach’s
narrative suggests that the printers of the Protestant narratives were aware of and tapping
into a tradition of Holy Land imagery. They were consciously placing their narratives into a
long and very specific tradition of representing the Holy Land, and they wanted their works
68 The Muslim figures in the Book of Hours are also sitting on carpets, two on one and one on another. With the damage to the image it is impossible to tell whether anything indicating money or exchange is also present.
to be associated with that tradition. It also suggests that the printers were interested in
illustrating the more quotidian aspects of the pilgrims’ journey and narrative. Both
Schweigger and Breüning mention and are annoyed by the fact that they, as Christians,
have to pay the infidel Turks for entrance to a site they considered as their patrimony. The
fact that no early modern Catholic pilgrimage text contains images of the parvis further
supports the idea that Protestant pilgrim-authors and printers were in some ways more closely bound to the late medieval tradition that were Catholic pilgrim-authors and printers.
Another difference of even greater confessional significance has to do with the location in the courtyard depicted in the pre-Reformation images so far discussed that was believed to be the site where Christ carried or fell with the cross.69 As noted, the pre-
Reformation images, with the possible exception of the painting in the Hours of René of
Anjou, all depict Christian pilgrims worshipping at this prominently marked spot in the
parvis. In Schweigger’s and Breüning’s texts, though there are depictions of pilgrims, there
is no marked location in the parvis for Christ falling with or carrying the cross. With so
many other similarities, this difference requires explanation. Simply, depicting the
veneration of such a site would run directly counter to Lutheran doctrine. Any of the
Lutherans involved in the publication of a Protestant account (the author himself, the
printer, the artist) would have been very uncomfortable replicating that aspect of pre-
Reformation images of the parvis. So, while the Lutheran pilgrim-authors, printers, and
69 The difference comes from the two Breydenbach images. The 1488 caption states in German that the stone marks he spot where Christ “viel sein creutz tragend” [fell while carrying his cross]. The 1505 version has in Latin that the stone indicates the spot where Christ fell [cecidit] with the cross.
artists were building on a medieval tradition of illustration, they were also adapting their
images to support their own theology.
The Edicule
Taking the body, Joseph wrapped it (in) clean linen and laid it in his new tomb that
he had hewn in the rock. Then he rolled a huge stone across the entrance to the
tomb and departed. (Mattew 27:59)
The edicule (sometimes spelled aedicule) is a building within a building. It is the small chapel structure that houses the grave of Jesus within the larger Church of the Holy
Sepulcher. The edicule has gone through a number of iterations in the centuries since the first structure was built under Constantine in the first half of the fourth century. This form of the edicule lasted nearly seven hundred years until it was ordered destroyed in 1009 by the Fatimid Caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah. Construction of a new edicule and church was begun a few years later, after Al-Hakim’s reign, under the direction of the Byzantine imperial government. The new buildings were consecrated in 1048. This was the form of the edicule seen by the Crusaders in the later eleventh and twelfth centuries. In 1555, with the eleventh century edifice in a significant state of decay, Boniface of Ragusa, the
Franciscan Custos (Custodian/Guardian) of the Holy Land gained permission from the
Ottoman administrators in Palestine to make repairs to the Church and completely rebuild the edicule. In 1808, a fire destroyed the edicule and much of the basilica. Within a few years the edicule was rebuilt in its present form.70
The earliest images of the edicule of which I am aware come from Reuwich’s
illustrations for Breydenbach’s pilgrimage narrative [figure 5]. Not all editions of
70 Biddle, Tomb of Christ, 44.
Breydenbach’s narrative contained all Reuwich’s images, but the 1486 German edition does
have the edicule with the caption, in Latin, reading, “The form and disposition of the Lord’s
grave.”71 The image shows the exterior of the third iteration (1048-1555) of the edicule
with the entrance on the left-hand side. No people are depicted, nor is the edicule shown in
any sort of context; the background is completely blank. In other words, the image gives no
indication that the edicule is housed inside the larger Church the Holy Sepulcher.
Looking at some early modern examples, Johann Helffrich’s narrative, published at
Leipzig in 1579, has many illustrations, including one of the edicule [figure 6].72 Oriented the same as Reuwich’s, with the entrance on the left, it shows the edicule in its fourth iteration. Here the chapel is hexagonal rather than square and does not have the decorative features on the roof on either side of the door. But like Reuwich, Helffrich’s edicule is depicted out of context.
Salomon Schweigger’s Reyßbeschreibung, printed at Nuremberg by Johann
Lantzenberger in 1608, is a particularly interesting example of an edicule image. On page
298, in the middle of Schweigger’s description of the Basilica and the edicule, there is a woodblock image of the edicule with a block wall behind (though not columns, as would have been more accurate), giving some indication that the chapel sits inside a larger building [figure 7]. What is surprising about this image is that it has two liftable paper panels that expose the building’s two inner rooms [figures 8 and 9]. Under the panel marked “A” there is an image of a man on his hands and knees crawling through a low doorway. Under the panel marked “B” the viewer sees that the low doorway connects the outer entrance room to the inner grave space. The picture of the inner grave appears to
71 Forma et dispositio dominici sepulchri. 72 Though it does not have an image of the parvis.
have a slab or table and eight lamps hanging from the ceiling. This is the work’s only interactive image and I have found no other such images in other travel or pilgrimage narratives from the period.
There are other examples from other genres of printed texts that used the paper- flap-reveal technique. Some late medieval and early modern medical texts used parchment and paper flaps to reveal internal anatomical structures.73 This technique was also used in some early modern religious works as well. For instance, Simon Schama, in his book
Landscape and Memory, discusses a set of Italian prints published in Florence in 1612 that depict episodes from the life of St. Francis. These prints, engraved by Raffaele Schiaminossi based on drawings by Jacopo Ligozzi, also use moveable paper flaps that reveal hidden parts of the image.74
Although I have not found any other interactive images of the edicule, Schweigger’s is not the only interactive representation of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher or the
Edicule. There are a number of extant examples of three-dimensional models from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of carved olive-wood of both the Church of the Holy
Sepulcher and the Edicule, often decoratively inlaid with mother-of-pearl, ivory, or bone.75
It has been speculated that the earliest production of these models probably dates from the late sixteenth century, possibly at Bethlehem and possibly influenced by the Franciscans.76
The most important feature of these models for our purposes is that they have removable
73 Bert S. Hall, "The Didactic and the Elegant: Some Thoughts on Scientific and Technological Illustrations in the Middle Ages and Renaissance" in Picturing knowledge: historical and philosophical problems concerning the use of art in science, B. Braigie, ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 11-16. 74 Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995), 437-439. 75 Biddle, The Tomb of Christ (London: Sutton Publishing, 1999), 44. 76 Ibid.
roofs. The roofs of the edicule models come off to reveal the chapel’s two interior rooms.
Color photographs of one elaborate specimen show the first room from the entrance, the
Chapel of the Angel, as the larger of the two with a little square of lighter colored wood representing the relic of the rolling stone. The doorway between the two rooms is quite low and small, and an oblong piece of white material sits on the right side of the smaller room, likely meant to represent the tomb’s marble slab.77
Schweigger’s edicule is reminiscent of these miniature models. In both cases, the viewer is invited to enter an image or representation of the inner sanctum through an action of discovery. A significant difference is the presence in Schweigger’s example of a textual guide for understanding. For the reader of Schweigger’s text, this was a more thickly contextualized image. With the edicule model, though the sensual experience is perhaps “thicker,” without an accompanying text, the model’s meaning is less fixed and more dependent on background knowledge and understanding of the user.
Schweigger’s interactive edicule remains a very compelling image and certainly would have been for readers in the early seventeenth century as well. It is even more compelling when compared with similar images reproduced in the Catholic pilgrim
Bernhard Walter’s account of his journey to the Holy Land. A series of four woodcut images starts with a cut-away interior view of the grave itself with various elements labeled, including the little square doorway so prominent in Schweigger’s image [figure 10]. Rather than starting with the exterior and moving in, each successive image in Walter’s text pulls further back from the grave chapel. The second image looks at the same side of the grave
77 Biddle, Tomb, figs. 46 and 47, 43. Biddle also mentions similar carved wood models of the larger Church of the Holy Sepulcher, some of which have removable models of the Edicule inside them. He also mentions a stone model of the Edicule found in a seventeenth century Amsterdam cesspit.
building as Schweigger’s image does, though it is more technically detailed [figure 11].
Although this image differs in many ways from the image of the grave chapel in
Breydenbach, they both show the grave without its larger architectural context within the church. Walter’s third image rectifies this, showing a side view of the grave chapel and the surrounding church columns and walls [figure 12]. This was a fairly common rendering of the relationship between the edicule and the surrounding church building. A similar image was printed in the Lutheran traveler Hans Jacob Breüning’s pilgrimage narrative [figure
13]. There, a section, not quite half, of the domed outer building has been cut away revealing the edicule on the center of the basilica floor. In both Walter and Breüning’s images the basilica’s dome is shown with the oculus at the top. Both also show the columned ground and second levels, along with the images of saints just below the ceiling.
Walter’s image does show more clearly the relationship between the edicule and the main entrance to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Breüning’s adds human figures in the second level’s gallery.
Hieronymus Scheidt’s work (1615) has something of a hybrid image of the edicule and basilica [figure 14]. Several things are going on at the same time here. First, the right side of the image, labeled “Mount Calvary,” shows the chapels immediately to the right of the entrance, what a pilgrim would see on entering the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. This side also has a compass rose, indicating that the entryway faced East. Then, the left side, labeled “The Holy Grave,” has an image of the edicule with a semi-circular outline surrounding three sides with small squares on the interior edge. The outline seems to represent the wall of the basilica and the squares the interior columns. The relative size is
inaccurate, the edicule being represented as significantly larger relative to the rest of the
building than it really was.
Walter’s final image [figure 15] shows the interior of the church looking out toward
the entrance doorway, but rather than another depiction of the grave chapel, only the
footprint or plot (Grundt) of the building is laid out on the floor. Here the orientation of the
edicule within the building is clearer. The footprint has the edicule’s entrance facing
directly toward the entrance to the basilica.
The relationship between Walter’s images and his text is unexpected. After spending
many pages describing the intricacies of dealing with Muslim porters, and giving advice on
exchanging money and paying the fees and taxes required of travelers, Walter states that
he will not describe the Church of the Holy Sepulcher or the grave, as that is not the
purpose of his book. “My little book,” he says, “deals with nothing other than how a pilgrim
ought to behave on such a journey.”78 He goes on to say that in the interest of brevity he will say no more, “but four different sketches of the Holy Sepulcher will record the way it looks.”79 Walter lets the images carry the full weight of describing the space for the
reader/viewer. This statement fits in with the overall tone of the work and the section on
Jerusalem. Throughout, Walter is more concerned with guiding the potential Catholic
pilgrim than he is in providing a vicarious experience of pilgrimage for an armchair
traveler. The images, however, run counter to this reluctance. They “describe” the Church
of the Holy Sepulcher and the Edicule at least as well as a written verbal description would.
It is only speculation, but this might be a case where the objectives of the author and those
78 Walter, Beschreibung einer Reiß, 34-35. “[M]ein Trachtätl auff nichts anders/als wie sich ein Peregrin auff solcher Reiß verhalten sole.” 79 Ibid., 35. “. . . hab ich umb der kurtz willen solches underlassen/Beynebens aber vier underschiedliche Abriß deß H. Grabs/wie allhie zusehen/verzeichnen wöllen.”
of the printer were at odds. Walter’s concern may well have been to tell his readers
“nothing other than how a pilgrim ought to behave,” but his printer has the more mundane
concern of selling books. Whatever the author says in the text, a printer might think that
images attract the eye, and through the eye, the purse.
Why was it important for the printer to present the Edicule in this way? How is the
Schweigger image similar to the Edicule model and the other paper-flap-reveals? What do they all have in common? Also, is there anything especially Protestant or Lutheran about these images? They all have a similar peeling back of visual barriers to reveal something hidden. They all invite the viewer to physically interact with an image rather than merely look at it. But the Schweigger image is closer in spirit and use to the models than to the other paper-flap-reveals. For one thing, they are both architectural. They are both representations of manmade space. Perhaps this explains why the Schweigger image seems more similar to the model than to the other printed works. For those who have seen those places and touched those things, the extra level of engagement would spur the memory. For
those who have not been there, the extra engagement would heighten the experience of the
physical object, either book or model.
The Edicule at Görlitz
At the close of the fifteenth century, the Jerusalem pilgrim and local Bürgermeister Georg
Emerich sponsored the construction of the Holy Grave chapel at Görlitz.80 The exact date of
completion is debated, but it was certainly finished by sometime in the 1520s and probably
at least a decade earlier. The grave chapel was one building in a group of three that
included chapels meant to recall the Chapel of Adam and Chapel of the Anointing in
80 The building is still standing.
Jerusalem. Though Georg Emerich died in 1507, his progeny held rights of custodianship
for generations thereafter. Some have speculated that Emerich brought a builder with him
on his pilgrimage to examine and measure the Holy Sepulcher, but Dalman dismisses this
idea.81 He suggests rather that the image of the grave chapel printed in the narrative of
Bernhard von Breydenbach at Mainz in 1486 may have influenced the design and
construction of the chapel in Görlitz.82 In the years after its construction, the Grave Chapel
and the other adjacent chapels were used in a number of processions and ceremonies,
mostly centered around the Easter liturgy. In 1525, the city joined the Lutheran
reformation and most religious processions were discontinued, but the ceremony of the
interment of Christ continued until 1535. On Corpus Christi of that year, according to
Dalman, a bolt of lightening split the wooden figure of Christ as it lay in its crypt, separating
the figure’s head from its body. Understandably, this was taken as a bad sign and the chapel
foundation did not reinstitute the interment ceremony until 1569.83
An image of a grave chapel [figure 16] printed by the Görlitz printer Ambrosius
Fritsch in both the 1582 and 1591 editions of Melchior Seydlitz’s Gründliche Beschreibung
der Wallfart nach dem heyligen Land has a caption at the top of the page that reads: Figur des H. Grabes/in massen es jetzund zu Jerusalem anzuschawen.84 There are two problems
with the use of this image. The most obvious is that it shows the grave chapel as being
outside, in nature, not within a larger structure as would be the case with the actual edicule
81 Gustaf Dalman, Das Grab Christi in Deutschland (Leipzig: Dieterich, 1922), 82. On the following page Dalman also mentions the illustration of the grave chapel that Fritsch used in Seydlitz’s narrative of 1580. No mention is made of that illustration being used in any other earlier publication that might help explain the discrepancy between the text and the image. 82 Ibid., 83-84. 83 Ibid., 86-87. 84 “An image of the H. Grave, all together as it can be seen to this day in Jerusalem”
in Jerusalem. This is curious. It seems either that Fritsch used an image originally made for an earlier publication that included an image of the Görlitz grave chapel, or that he was not a very careful reader of the texts he printed. In Seydlitz’s description, the Jerusalem Chapel of the Holy Sepulcher is clearly described as sitting within the larger structure of the
Basilica. Any even moderately attentive reader would surely have noticed the discrepancy.
The second problem has to do with the form of the grave chapel building itself. The form of the Görlitz Holy Grave Chapel, and thus the form of the building in the printed image, is of the pre-1555 iteration of the edicule as Emmerich would have seen it, not the one that
Seydlitz would have seen during his pilgrimage in 1556 and, of course, not the one a visitor in the late sixteenth century would have seen. The fact that the same image was printed in both the 1582 and 1591 editions indicates that the inclusion of an image, even an inaccurate one, outweighed any confusion caused by these discrepancies.
Part II, Chapter 5 – Peoples of the Holy Land
Sects and the Western Pilgrim
In November 2008, video of a fight went viral on the internet. In itself, this was not unusual.
Videos of fights are unfortunately common and popular on the web. What made this video special, bringing the attention of international news outlets, was where the fight took place and who the chief combatants were. On November 9th, as Armenian monks at the Church of
the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem prepared for their celebration of the Feast of the Cross,
commemorating Empress Helena’s fourth-century discovery of the cross of the crucifixion,
a disagreement arose between the Armenians and a group of Greek monks. The dispute
concerned the so-called status quo, the 1852 decree by the Ottoman rulers of Jerusalem
covering the relative rights and privileges of the various Christian sects resident at the
Church of the Holy Sepulcher. In this case, the Greeks claimed the right to post a second
guardian in the edicule during the Armenian’s ceremony. The Armenians maintained that
this was an innovation that went against the status quo. A fist fight erupted between the
two groups and Israeli police were called in to break it up. In the video, a group of black
robed figures, the Armenians, can be seen from above chanting as they make their way
around the edicule. A few Israeli police stand near the edicule’s entrance in conversation
with a bearded man also in a black robe, the Greek patriarch. After several minutes of
circumambulating the edicule, the Armenians stop at the entrance and the Greek patriarch
approaches with the Israeli police right behind. It is not clear from the video what exactly
happened next but soon yelling interrupts the chanting and black robed bodies start to
swarm around the edicule’s entrance. As the camera zooms in on the action, one can see
pushing and shoving with some figures from both sides and the police trying to calm the
situation. From news footage taken on the ground floor in the midst of the fight, white-
haired, bearded old men tussle with younger men, punches are thrown, hats are knocked
off, religious artifacts are tossed to the ground, in a few cases, blood is drawn. After two
minutes or so, some order is restored and the camera shows a group of Greek monks
blocking the doorway to the edicule.
At the time, many people were surprised and shocked that religious men would
engage in such behavior at the site of their Lord’s crucifixion, burial, and resurrection. But
as news agencies reported, conflicts like this, though rarely resulting in physical violence,
have been the norm at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher for well over a millennium.
Christianity, at least as historically practiced, is an exclusivist religion. What one believes
and how one enacts that belief determine one’s posthumous destination. One’s eternal life
therefore, depends on membership in the right group and anything that threatens that
membership is taken very seriously. Western pilgrims throughout the Christian era
encountered and commented on the sectarian diversity of Jerusalem. In the early modern
period particularly, pilgrim-authors used the sectarian differences and conflicts seen at
Jerusalem to comment on the religious controversies of the Reformation.
“Others” and Other “Others”
Daniel Ecklin’s journey (1552/3) to the Holy Land did not follow the traditional pilgrimage
itinerary. Medieval and early modern Catholic pilgrims most often took ship from Venice
and arrived in the port city of Jaffa before heading overland to Jerusalem. Ecklin’s itinerary,
however, is in a sense typical of many Protestant pilgrims in that it was based on the
specific goals of his journey. Ecklin, like other Protestants after him, did not set out to the
East specifically to visit Jerusalem. He had left his home in Aarau, Switzerland to apprentice
with various medical professionals and apothecaries. He travelled widely and eventually
found himself in Syria. According to his own description, the closer he came to the Holy
Land, the more he felt drawn to Jerusalem. In Damascus, he joined a group of Turkish merchants and with them made his way south. The story of Ecklin’s arrival in Jerusalem illustrates a number of important points about relations between members of different religious groups in the Holy Land.
In his pilgrimage account, first published in 1575 at Basel, Ecklin is very
complimentary toward his Turkish companions. The Turkish merchants protected him and
treated him well along the journey. Ecklin writes, “They spoke kindly to me and insisted
that I eat and drink with them, for which they asked nothing of me.”1 Once in Jerusalem,
one of the Turks, a clerk named “Cameel,” invited Ecklin to his house. There, Cameel gave
him food and drink and offered to show Ecklin around town. Ecklin agreed and Cameel gave him a Turkish style turban, suggesting that it was best for him to hide his Christian identity in public. Ecklin agreed to this as Turkish youths had attacked him in public before.
After wandering around the city for a while, Cameel led Ecklin to the Temple of Solomon
“which is now a Turkish church” (the al-Aqsa Mosque, located near the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount).2 Ecklin knew that for a Christian to enter the mosque meant either
death or conversion and so refused to enter. The more Ecklin refused, the more Cameel
cajoled and threatened. Soon another Turk came over and entered the conversation. They
both told Ecklin that he should pronounce the shahada, or the Muslim confession of faith,
1 Ecklin, Reiß zum heiligen Grab, diir. “...gabend mir gute wort/mußt auch mit inen essen und trincken/dz sie nichts von mir begerten. . .” 2 Ibid. “. . . wolt er mich auch in tempel füren/da der alt tempel Salomonis gewesen ist/welches dann jetzund ein Türckische Kirch ist. . .”
which Ecklin’s text renders as “Ley-Lahel La Mahamet Soldan.”3 Ecklin reports that he
refused. He had heard from other Christians that when these words were spoken, “they
made one into a Turk.”4 Although he did not make the Muslim confession of faith, Cameel
and the other Turk lied and said that he did, and forced him to stay “locked up and
imprisoned” in a room on the grounds of the Mosque.5 Ecklin gives no details of his
imprisonment, but his dispute soon came before the Subasha, the Ottoman ruler of the city.
Cameel claimed that he had made Ecklin into a Turk and therefore Ecklin should remain his
bonded servant.6 Rather than answer Cameel’s charges directly, Ecklin first asked that the
Subasha send for one of the Franciscan monks who might assist in clearing up this matter.
Within the hour a monk arrived and Ecklin told him the story of his recent troubles, how he
had traveled with the Turkish merchants through Syria to Jerusalem and how well they had
treated him until Cameel tricked him into entering the Temple. In the end, Ecklin said that
he just wanted to remain a free Christian.7 All of this was relayed to the Governor, who got
very angry with Cameel. “The clerk was roughly handled by the governor,” and Cameel was
forced to apologize and give restitution.8 “The Turks must, therefore,” Ecklin continues,
“rightly be praised, for they dealt honorably with me.”9
3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. “Dz wolt ich gäntzlich nit thun dann ich vor anderen Christen gehört hat/Wann einer dise wort spräche/so machten sie einen zu Türcken . . .” 5 Ibid., diiiv. “. . . versperret und verschlossen.” 6 Ibid. “Der Schreiber thet sein klag dar/das er einen Türcken auß mir machen köndte/unnd das ich sein leibeygner knecht bleiben sölte.” 7 Ibid. “Wäre derhalben ein Christ/unnd begärte ein zu bleiben: Wäre auch frey/niemandts verkaufft/begerte auch ein solcher zu bleiben wo müglich.” 8 Ibid. “Dem Schreiber ward rauch geschneützt vom Obersten/ich acht er habe etwas zür Büß geben und bealen müssen.” 9 Ibid. “Müß derhalben der Türcken Recht loben/dann sie ehrlich mit mir gehandelt haben.”
Ecklin’s story rings true because of its ambiguity. Here was a young man, a stranger
in a strange land, who was helped along by some genuinely kind Muslim Turkish
merchants, only to be, from his perspective, taken advantage of by one of them, and then
rescued by another genuinely kind, or at least unbiased, Turkish official. Ecklin paints with
the fine brush of actual experience, rather than using broad strokes to cover all Turks in
opprobrium for the actions of only one. As in this case, the memories of travel are often
closely tied to memories of the people met along the way. In many ways, such memories
define the trip as much as or more than the sites seen. Explicit and implicit comparison of
the foreigners encountered with each other and with oneself helped the pilgrim-author,
and through him the reader, to define their ethnic, cultural, and religious identity.10
The Kindness of Strangers?:
Lutheran Travelers and Their Franciscan Hosts
On May 6, 1581, the Lutheran minister Solomon Schweigger and four Lutheran companions were newly arrived in Jerusalem, pretending to be Catholics, and lodging at the city’s
Franciscan friary, staffed at this time by a group of Italian friars. There was a knock on the door of their room, and one of Schweigger’s companions, Adam von Schlieben, went to answer it. He was gone for several minutes and when he returned he told the others that their host, the superintendent of the Franciscan mission in the Holy Land, had come to see them, asking why they have come to Jerusalem. Was it as tourists, just to see the ancient sites and exotic peoples, or had they come “on account of devotion to visit the holy city of
10 One complication is that many of the Protestant pilgrims travelled more widely in the Muslim world so their first interactions with radically foreign people may have not been within the pilgrimage context. So as to keep the analysis manageable and coherent, I will confine my analysis to intercultural and interreligious contacts that occurred while the pilgrims were in Palestine.
the suffering Christ?”11 Von Schlieben told his companions that he had assured the superintendent that they were in Jerusalem primarily as pilgrims. The superintendent had responded that it was the custom for all pilgrims to make a full confession and take communion before visiting the holy sites.12 When von Schlieben informed the others of this
stipulation, Schweigger says, “There arose much dispute between us over this matter, as
had happened many times previously on our journey.”13
The Lutheran companions were stuck. It seems they either had to continue to “pass”
as Catholics, going against their religious convictions by confessing and taking communion
in the Catholic custom, or they had to come out of the confessional closet and acknowledge
their religious identity, risking at least the ill will of their hosts if not much worse. As a
Lutheran minister, Schweigger makes clear where he stood:
I suggest we declare ourselves against the monastic brother without any timidity,
[telling him] that we do not agree with them in religion, but rather hold to the
evangelical teaching and creed. We therefore desire that they should allow us in our
devotion to visit the holy grave of Christ with no opposition. We should also conduct
11 Schweigger, Ein Newe, 289. “Der [Adam von Schlieben] da von dem Gaurdian gefragt worden/ welcher gestalt wir gen Jerusalem kommen were/ dann etliche kemen dahin/ allein/ daß sie die Länder, die Völker/ Sitten unnd Gewohnheit der Völker erkündigen möchten. Etliche aber kemen Andacht halben dahin/ daß sie die heiligen Stät des Leidens Christi möchten besichtigen.” 12 Ibid. “Derwegen solt ihr (sprach der Guardian) euch schicken/daßir auff den Abend/wie Christlich und breuchig ist/nicht allein ewer Beicht verrichtet/sondern auch das Sacrament des Abendmals Christi empfahet.” 13 Ibid. “Da erhub sich unter uns viel Disputirns über dieser fach/ wie auch vorhin mehr malen auff der Reys.”
ourselves in the fullest sense gently, humbly, and suitably, so that no one would
want to produce any charges against us.14
To his companions, however, this plan was too risky. They feared, according to Schweigger, that if found out, the Franciscans might go so far as to poison their food and drink, not only because of their religious differences, they said, but also because of Italians’ well-known hatred of Germans. Schweigger says that he was open to other suggestions, but feared that the weight of this deception on their consciences would be worse than the risk of being found out. This dissimulation, he says, “has stained us with such a blemish that we have shame before God and especially ourselves.”15 He told them that unless someone came up with a better solution, he would forgo his visit to the Holy Sepulcher and focus on visiting the area’s antiquities and observing its people and geography. Finally, von Schlieben spoke up and said that he had heard about other pilgrims also “inclined toward evangelical teaching . . . who falsely professed how this journey had been laid upon them by their confessors on account of the heaviness of their sins and as part of their penance they were not to partake of Holy Communion or absolution until they had completed their pilgrimage.”16 Schweigger reluctantly agreed to go along with this plan, the Franciscans
14 Ibid, 290. “Zeigt ich an/ wie ich für rathsam hielt/ daß wir uns gegen den Klosterbrüdern erklerten ohn alle scheu/ wie wir nemlich in der Religion mit inen nicht überein kemen/ sondern hielten ob der Evangelischen Lehr und bekantnus/ begehrten derwegen/daß sie uns unserer Andacht nach das H. Grab Christi wolten vergünnen zu besichtigten/ohn jedermenniglichs einred/wir wolten uns in solchem allem dermassen glimpfflig/bescheidenlich und der Gebühr nach verhalten/daß niemand einige beschwerd oder billiche klag wieder uns möcht beybringen.” 15 Ibid., 291. “...uns mit einem solchen Schanfleck befleckten/dessen wir uns vor Gott und auch zumal bey den unserigen zu schemen hetten.” 16 Ibid. “Der Herr von Schlieben bracht endlich für/wie er gehört hett/daß vor dieser Zeit andere der Evangelischen Lehr zugewante/mit diesem List bei den München weren mit gutem Glimpff davon kommen/daß sie erdichter weiß fürgeben/wie ihnen diese Reyß gen Jerusalem von ihren Beichtvättern/ihrer schweren begangenen Mißhandlungen halb/zur
accepted the ruse and allowed the Lutheran pilgrims to visit the holy sites in and around
Jerusalem.
In Schweigger’s account there is little sense of common Western Christian identity with the Franciscans. The monks are people to be wary of. Schweigger wants to come clean about his Lutheran beliefs, but not because he thinks the Franciscans will be in any way accepting of religious difference. Rather, being forthright about one’s Lutheran identity was, for Schweigger if not his companions, a fundamental part of that identity. It was one of the things that made him, in his own mind, a Lutheran and a Christian. Hiding his Lutheran- ness was, as he tells it, very uncomfortable. Regardless, a clear line is drawn in the confessional sand and both Schweigger and his companions see the Franciscans as an enemy. But the fear they feel also threatened to break them apart. Though the Lutheran pilgrimage group held together in the end, even the bonds of sectarian communitas frayed under the weight of confessional conflict.
A more nuanced view is given by two accounts from Lutheran pilgrim-authors who travelled in the same pilgrim group. Melchior Seydlitz and Wolfgang Müntzer travelled to
Palestine in the summer of 1556. Hailing from Görlitz, little is known of Seydlitz other than what he wrote in his narrative, but in 1556 he was a soldier in the service of Charles V, fighting the French in Italy. When the belligerents signed a five-year truce, Seydlitz and three other German companions (whether they were all Lutheran is not clear) decided to do some travelling and made their way to Venice. In Venice they booked passage on a ship that would take them as far as Cyprus. Along the way their party of pilgrims grew steadily to seventeen individuals. At Cyprus they hired another ship that took them to the port city
Buß wer aufferlegt worden/möchten auch des H. Abendtmals/unnd der Absolution nicht ehe theilhafftig werden/dann nach vollbrachter ihrer Pilgerschafft.”
of Jaffa in Palestine and would wait twenty days for them as they made their way to
Jerusalem and back.
Wolfgang Müntzer was from a wealthy and noble Nuremberg family. His parents had moved from their home town, the Catholic city of Bamberg, to Nuremberg apparently for religious reasons. Wolfgang was born most likely in Nuremberg in May 1524 and baptized as “deutsch,” in other words as a Lutheran.17 His reasons for going to Jerusalem are not entirely clear. His narrative, published posthumously at Nuremberg by Ludwig
Lochner in 1624, Müntzer having died in 1577, begins in full swing with him in Venice gaining passage on the same ship as Seydlitz.18 They both arrived in Jaffa after forty-eight storm-tossed days at sea.
Their journey through the Holy Land itself was really quite ordinary and typical.
Over the course to several days, they made their way on hired donkeys from Jaffa to
Jerusalem. Once in Jerusalem, they lodged with the Franciscan brothers. They toured the city, visiting all the regular sites, returning several times, as was common, to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Müntzer, as a nobleman, was made a knight of the Holy Sepulcher.19
They visited Bethlehem and the Dead Sea, and some of the party, including Seydlitz, saw the cave in which John the Baptist lived while in the desert.
17 http://www.st-johannis-nuernberg.de/html/9__kapitel.html 18 They both give the name of the ship’s captain, Piero or Peter de Lisina, though oddly neither pilgrim-author mentions the other. 19 Müntzer, Reißbeschreibung, 26. This is an interesting point in itself. Müntzer does not give many details of the ceremony, but merely states that the potential knight must swear that he is a nobleman and pledge he will defend the Holy Sepulcher from all unbelievers from his own resources. As the ceremony is described in other pilgrimage narratives, there was also a significant Catholic element. The initiands had to swear loyalty to the Pope as well as take communion in the Roman fashion. Seydlitz makes no mention of the ceremony.
It was only as they were about to leave the Holy Land that things got especially
interesting. Seydlitz and Müntzer describe the situation in similar terms. Apparently, about
six weeks before their arrival in Jaffa, a group of Christian raiders from the Island of Malta
attacked a small village near Jaffa, leading away about seventy people, “jung und alt,” into
servitude.20 The locals were still quite upset about this and seized the pilgrim party, seeing
this as suitable retribution. Thus began a multi-year odyssey of captivity that took Müntzer
and Seydlitz from Jerusalem through Palestine and Syria to Constantinople. It also
constitutes a switch of genres from pilgrimage narrative to captivity narrative.
During the first weeks of their time in captivity, the pilgrims appealed for assistance
to the Franciscan Guardian, the leader of and official representative for Western European
Christians in the Ottoman province of Palestine. To say the least, they were disappointed in
his response. Again, Seydlitz and Müntzer tell essentially the same story. The pilgrims
immediately sent word to the Guardian informing him of their situation and asking that he
intervene on their behalf with the provincial Ottoman officials. Not only did he not
intervene for them, he did not even respond to their initial letter. As Seydlitz explains, “He,
as a haughty man . . . did little or nothing.”21
The captives were held in very unpleasant conditions. The heat was unbearable and the food and water the pilgrims were given made them ill. Seydlitz tells the story of one pilgrim, Nicklas von Reydeburg, drinking water with a leech in it, which attached itself to the inside of his throat. One of the Moors who took care of them had to pull the leech out with some sort of wooden instrument. The leech was longer than a finger, Seydlitz says, but
20 Müntzer, Reyßbeschreibung, 10. Seydlitz, Beschreibung der Wallfart, Hiiiv-Hivr. 21 Seydlitz, Beschreibung der Wallfart, Ir. “Er aber alß ein höchmütiger Man . . . wenig oder nichts anfechten.” Müntzer uses the same term, “höchmütiger,” to describe the Guardian (64).
the man quickly recovered from the ordeal.22 The pilgrims sent another, more urgent letter.
This time the Guardian did respond to the captives, excusing his previous failure by saying that he had been so busy with his duties in Jerusalem that he had forgotten about them.23
The Guardian insisted that the pilgrims gather all their money together, “over one hundred ducats,” despite the fact that he knew they had little money with them, so that he might use it to negotiate with the Ottoman officials.24
Müntzer and Seydlitz both accuse the Guardian of extreme greed. They say that
when he heard that a new group of pilgrims had arrived in Jaffa from Venice he hurried to
meet them in hopes that they would give him money. Some members of this newly arrived
pilgrim group heard about the captives’ plight and visited them in their prison. Seydlitz and
Müntzer report that the new pilgrims were appalled at the conditions the prisoners were
being forced to endure and that they were equally appalled that the Guardian had done so
little to ameliorate their dreadful situation. They confronted the Guardian and tried to
shame him into doing what they all saw as his job. The Guardian had several excuses at the
ready. First, he said, “God always forgives, but nevertheless punishes.”25 Their difficulties
were God’s punishment, he said, for the fact that some in their group were “stained by the
Lutheran heresy.”26 Secondly, the Guardian claimed, the now captive pilgrims had only
22 Ibid. 23 Müntzer, Reyßbeschreibung, 64. 24 Seydlitz, Beschreibung der Wallfart, Ir – Iv. “…denn er uber 100 Ducaten von uns bekommen…” 25 Ibid., Iiiv. “Darauff zeigt er an/daß Gott nimmer nichts vergebens/Sondern allezeit missethat halben straffte.” Müntzer, Reyßbeschreibung, 66. “Demnach Gott sein Volk nie vergebens/sonder allzeit von wegen ihrer Sünden gestrafft.” 26 Seydlitz, Beschreibung der Wallfart, Iiiv. “Nun weren etliche unter uns (wie er berichtet)/mit der Lutherischen Ketzerei beflecket/darumb denn Gott diese Strafe uber uns gesendet/und in die Hende der Unglaubigen gegeben hette.” Müntzer,
given the Franciscans sixteen ducats for the hospitality they had received during their time in Jerusalem. Both Seydlitz and Müntzer dispute this, though with different numbers.
Seydlitz says that as a group they gave the Franciscans over one hundred ducats as they left the cloister in Jerusalem. Müntzer is more conservative, saying that they gave the
Franciscans over twenty-four ducats. Either way, they both give the impression that the pilgrims had paid their fair share and that regardless, the Guardian was still honor bound to do everything in his power to help win their release. Though the Guardian agreed to do what he could and intervene with various Ottoman officials, little came of it and the pilgrims’ captivity continued.
Seydlitz and Müntzer both clearly blame the Guardian for the length of their captivity. Had he done his duty from the beginning, they would have been released quickly.
Instead, they were transferred first to Damascus and then to Constantinople where they were held for several years as slaves in the galleys of the Sultan. During their captivity in
Constantinople, they were visited by a number of Western European Christians, presumably most or all Catholics, who tried to get them released. Müntzer and Seydlitz have only the most complimentary things to say about these individuals. Finally, in June
1559, the French ambassador to the Ottoman Sultan managed to secure the pilgrims’ freedom. By the end of July, Müntzer and Seydlitz were back in Venice.
Not all Protestant pilgrim-authors had negative experiences with the Franciscans or their superintendents. In his pilgrimage account published at Erfurt in 1615 shortly after returning to German lands, Hieronymus Scheidt says that he was at first greeted warmly by the Franciscans and their superintendent. They were in awe, he says, that such a young
Reyßbeschreibung, 66. “Derhalben hett der Herr/als die zum theil/wie er glaubig bericht/mit dem Lutherischen Glauben befleckt.”
man (he was only about twenty years old at the time), travelling entirely alone, had made it
all the way to Jerusalem. Quite quickly, however, the superintendent became suspicious.
Scheidt did not have the customary and technically required papal letter of permission for
Jerusalem pilgrimage. In words very similar to those in Schweigger’s narrative, the
superintendent asked Scheidt what “belief” [glaubens] he was and why he had come to
Jerusalem, “whether from a true desire to see the Holy Grave and the other sacred places,
or only to travel through and see the land.”27 According to the superintendent, others
posing as good Christians had come before and the Franciscans had shown them the holy
places, only for the visitors to scorn and ridicule those places “mehr dann die Heyden”
[more than the heathens].28 Scheidt quickly reassured him. He hoped the Franciscans
would not take it amiss, but he did not agree with them regarding religion. He was born
and raised within the Lutheran teaching. He did, however, promise to behave humbly in
their churches and pay all fees so that they could make no fair complaint about him. He
would also certainly not mock the holy sites. He had come a very long way to visit them on
account of great desire and eagerness, and would give them all proper reverence. So, here
Scheidt, the solo traveler, did what Schweigger wanted to do but was held back by the fears
of his travelling companions. Scheidt openly acknowledged his religious identity and tried
to behave in a forthright manner. At least at first.
The Franciscans, being unsure how to proceed, led Scheidt to a room in which he
met two English pilgrims, one of whom was “ein Calvinischer Praedicant” [a Calvinist
27 Scheidt, Beschreibung der Reise, Diiir. “Fragte mich derwegen der Guardian, was glaubens ich were? Und warum ich dahin käme/sampt andern heiligen Plätzen zu sehen begehrte/oder ich sonst nur durchreisete/diese Lande zu besehen?” 28 Ibid. “Denn es nicht ohne/daß ihnen das etliche vorkämen/die sich vor gute Christen ausgeben/und so sie ihnen heiligen Örther zeigeten/verachteten und verlacheten sie dieselben mehr dann die Heyden…”
preacher].29 They welcomed Scheidt and suggested that if the superintendent refused to let them visit the holy sites, they should all pool their resources and hire a guide for themselves. The superintendent soon came to their room and scolded them all, saying that they should take this opportunity to reconcile themselves with their savior.30 When the superintendent finished, Scheidt asked to speak with him privately. In the narrative,
Scheidt supposes that the superintendent thought a conversion was immanent. But in the privacy of the superintendent’s rooms, Scheidt wove a story, a Notlüge (a white lie) as he calls it, telling the superintendent that he was a servant to a young prince who had a great desire to see the Holy Land, but because of his duties and the great danger of the journey could not make a visit himself. Scheidt had taken up the task with the understanding that he would report back to the prince all the details of the journey and, more importantly, he solemnly swore to maintain his conscience intact by not participating in Catholic communion. The superintendent, moved by Scheidt’s tale of duty and fidelity, apologized for trying to persuade him from his beliefs and assured Scheidt that they compelled no one to accept their religion and no more would be said about the matter. Scheidt would be treated as any other pilgrim.31 Scheidt ends this part of his tale with a scene of all the pilgrims in residence, (Scheidt himself, the two English Calvinists, four Frenchmen, a
Spaniard, and a Neapolitan) sitting down for dinner with the superintendent and the
29 Ibid., Diiiv. “Darauff ward ich in eine Kammer gewiesen/darinnen ich noch zweene Engelische Pilger/so erst vor vier Tage ankommen/antraff deren einer Calvinischer Praedicant was aus Engelland/so auch bey seinem Bekendtniß bleiben…” 30 Ibid., Divr. “[W]olte er uns vermahnet haben/das wir von lieben Gott/der uns so wirdig geacht/und einen so weiten gefehrlichen Weg frisch und gesund geführet hette . . . uns mit ihme versöhnen…” 31 Ibid., Divv.“…denn sie Niemand mit Gewalt zu ihrer religion zwingeten.”
Franciscan brothers. “After which,” he says, “we were treated gar herrlich und stattlich
[very well and nobly].”32
To someone who has not read many Protestant pilgrimage narratives, the generally positive image of the Franciscans can be surprising. As historians of early modern Europe, we are conditioned to focus on confessional conflict and to see toleration or acceptance of religious difference as an aberration. But in fact, this general, though by no means total, lack of polemic is one of the characteristic features of German Protestant pilgrimage narratives. There are many possible explanations for this. Genre might be an important consideration. Pilgrimage narratives were not traditionally places to engage in focused religious polemic. It might well have been a business matter. Printers would likely not want to alienate Catholic readers, who might make up a substantial part of their potential audience. It may simply have been an accurate representation of the pilgrims’ perceptions.
Any or all of these might be the case, and there are certainly other possibilities as well. But here I would like to concentrate more on what these accounts mean; how do they function as representations of the relationship between Lutherans and Franciscans?
Aside from the apparent incongruity of Lutherans on pilgrimage, Schweigger’s story seems to fit nicely with our general view of Catholic/Protestant relations as full of suspicion, intolerance, fear, and enmity. The pilgrims as a group are so concerned about the repercussions of being Lutherans in the Holy Land that they feel compelled to hide their religious identities. Schweigger, despite being a Lutheran minister, and though protesting, goes along with the plan. Further, not only does pilgrimage in this case encourage conflict between Lutheran and Catholic, it also does so among the pilgrims themselves. In fact, the
32 Ibid., Divr. “[U]nd nach dem wir gar herrlich und stattlich tractirt worden/giengen wir wider in unsere Gemach.”
only open conflict Schweigger talks about is between the Lutheran companions as to how they, and by extension any Lutheran in a similar situation, should conduct themselves in relation to the Franciscans. Along the contestation/communitas spectrum, this places
Schweigger very much in the realm of contestation, but the conflict is not where we might have expected it. Schweigger does not take the opportunity to attack Catholicism, or the
Franciscans particularly. Indeed, his threat to abandon the religious goals of the journey demonstrates how fragile and frayed the bonds between the Lutheran companions had become. Ultimately, however, Lutheran communion is maintained. They find common ground; a common ground based on a lie told to the Franciscans, but common ground nonetheless. It is a confessionally satisfying conclusion. Despite conflict, the bond of shared belief wins out and Schweigger does not again bring up or describe the Lutheran companions’ relationship with the Franciscans.
Unlike with Solomon Schweigger, Müntzer and Seydlitz do not portray Catholics as a group in a negative light. They are very clear that one Catholic man, the Franciscan
Guardian, was largely to blame for their extended imprisonment. In their telling, he was a supercilious and grasping man, more interested in extracting money from visiting pilgrims than he was in fulfilling his duties as a literal guardian of Western Christian pilgrims regardless of their confessional identities. Other Catholics and even other Franciscans, however, are continually shown going out of their way to render assistance to the captives.
The two Lutheran ex-captives do not let one bad Franciscan apple spoil the whole Catholic barrel. A common Western Christian identity is maintained and even strengthened through the contrast drawn between the Guardian’s reprehensible behavior and the kindness of the
other Catholics. Confessional boundaries and identities take a back seat to Christian
communitas in this case.
Beyond the vagaries of authorial voice and temperament, there are several possible
reasons for the difference between Schweigger’s account on one hand and those of Müntzer
and Seydlitz on the other. First of all, Schweigger was travelling in a small pilgrim group
with four other Lutherans, and, at least the way he tells the story, his companions were
particularly nervous about how the Franciscans in Jerusalem might react to their Lutheran
beliefs. This could well have colored his views. Also, as a Lutheran minister, Schweigger
was perhaps especially attuned to confessional tensions. As a soldier, especially as a soldier
fighting for a Catholic monarch and fighting alongside Catholic soldiers, Seydlitz would
likely have been less concerned with such matters of confessional identity. The fact that
Müntzer’s account agrees so closely with Seydlitz’s would seem to indicate that either
Müntzer’s publisher used Seydlitz’s work as a source or, if Lochner did not know about or
have access to Seydlitz’s account, the accounts of both men are accurate representations of
the events. In this case, Müntzer may have just been calling it like he and the other captive
pilgrims saw their situation.
Scheidt’s case is a little different. First of all, unlike Schweigger, he is alone. No need
to compromise. The only “intra-Lutheran” conflict is internal. Perhaps influenced by
Schweigger’s account of his argument with his companions (Scheidt certainly read
Schweigger’s narrative, and they even met in Nuremberg in January 1619), Scheidt has his
“here I stand” moment, acknowledging his confessional identity in the face of Franciscan opposition. Though he does not explain his reasons for then lying to the superintendent, there is a feeling that he was not entirely comfortable being open about his religious
identity, a sense that he lost his nerve a bit after his initial candidness, especially in the face
of a stern scolding (remember he is only twenty). The presence of the English “Calvinists”
did little to reassure him. So, the primary location of conflict here was in the relationship
between the Lutheran Scheidt and the Catholic superintendent, a position along our
spectrum that reinforced confessional boundaries. As with Schweigger, Scheidt’s lie can be
seen as a product of contestation, but it was a product that resulted in a certain level of
communitas, that seemingly enfolded even the English “Calvinists” as well. In contrast to
Schweigger, however, Scheidt’s lie was not about his identity, merely his circumstances.
This Notlüge greased the socio-religious wheels such that the contestants could break bread together in communal harmony. As with Müntzer and Seydlitz, the barriers between the confessions were significantly diminished if not entirely removed and a common western Christian cultural bond in the end trumped confessional divisions.
Looking at these four Lutheran pilgrimage narratives using communitas/ contestation continuum as an analytical tool calls our attention to the fact that confessional identities were formed in the tension between centrifugal and centripetal forces, those things that tended to pull apart and those that tended to push together. Scheidt,
Schweigger, Müntzer, and Seydlitz struggled with these forces. They are pushed and pulled, and in the end forced to act.
The Other “Others”: Theological
Disagreements Between East and West
Also in this temple are various sects of Christians, different in belief. From the
Barefoot monks of Mount Sion, of the Order of Saint Francis, follow the Greeks,
Armenians, Georgians, Syrians, Basaini from the Land of Prester John in India,
Jacobites, and Nestorians. They each have, in the aforementioned temple, their own
places and chapels wherein they perform their religious services and ceremonies, so
different from our own.33
When early modern pilgrim-authors described the Eastern Christians they encountered in
Palestine they emphasized the same religious and cultural practices that were being fought over in Europe at the time. Chief among these were the sacraments, specifically communion and baptism, and the authority of the pope. Though the pilgrim-authors rarely used the
practices of the Eastern Christians to make explicit theological or doctrinal points, the
contemporary reader would surely have understood that in Europe’s environment of
confessional conflict no religious statement was innocuous.
As was often the case, early modern pilgrim-authors built on the work of their medieval counterparts. Late medieval pilgrim-authors often mentioned the beliefs and practices of the Eastern Christians they encountered in the Holy Land.34 These
observations were usually laid out with each sect given its own brief section in descending
33 Müntzer, Reysbeschreibung, 18. “Es sind auch in diesem Tempel vielerley Secten der Christen/so im Glauben unterschiedlich seyn/ Als die Parfusser Münch von dem Ber Sion/S. Franciscen Ordens/ folgends die Griechen/Armenier/Georgiter/Suryniter/ Basayni/auß deß Priesters Johanns Land/in Indien/Jacobiter/Nestorianer/diese alle haben in gemeltem Tempel sondere Ort und Capelln/ihren Gottes dienst und Ceremonien so den unsern ungleich/zuverbringen.” 34 Some research has been done on the relationship between the Franks and Eastern Christians in the Levant after the First Crusade. Though Benjamin Z. Kadar has challenged Joshua Prawer’s contention that the relationship was one of general enmity, I tend to favor Prawer’s position. At least as far as the question of the holy sites in Jerusalem, contention seems to have been more the rule than communitas. For more on this question, see Joshua Prawer, The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem: European Colonialism in the Middle Ages (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1972), and Benjamin Z. Kadar, “Latins and Oriental Christians in the Frankish Levant, 1099-1291,” in Franks, Muslims and Oriental Christians in the Latin Levant: Studies in Frontier Acculturation (Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing, 2006), 209-222. See also Christoper ManEvitt, The Crusades and the Christian World of the East: Rough Tolerance (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007).
order of importance or prominence (from the pilgrim-author’s perspective), with the
Latins and Greeks in the top two spots and the others following in various orders. Father
Felix Fabri, for instance, begins his description of the Christians of Jerusalem by at once praising and condemning the city’s religious diversity:
As the variety of created beings ornaments the universe, and displays the wondrous
perfection of the Creator, so the different nations, manners, languages, and rites
would greatly adorn the Catholic Church, and show the wondrous perfection of our
Redeemer, if only the obstinate and abominable errors of heathens, heretics, and
schismatics were not found among them, although even these prove God to be
wondrous and perfect.35
Fabri is all for cultural diversity as long as there is general religious conformity to the
Roman Church. In fact, when there is conformity to the Roman Church, such cultural
diversity only adds to the Church’s glory. He continues by looking back to a time when
cultural diversity was honored alongside orthodoxy and entry standards were higher for
the Holy Land’s sacred sites:
In the good old times Christians from all parts of the world, and speaking all
languages, used to enter it [the Holy Sepulcher], desiring to worship God, without
any errors, treacheries, or superstitions, while excommunicated persons,
schismatics, and outcast heretics, of whom . . . the temple is now full, by whom the
building is defiled, were then denied admittance.36
35 Fabri, Eigentliche Beschreibung, 134a. 36 Ibid. Nikolas Wankel, whose pilgrimage narrative was published in 1517, says that the Eastern Christians are separated into seven groups, “yet they are all heretics and apostates . . . [and] false Christians” (ciiiv).
The contemporary Eastern Christians, according to Fabri, had greatly strayed from the teachings of the true Church and held “various deadly errors even in the essentials of the faith.”37 Though he states that the “excommunicated persons, schismatics, and outcast heretics” “defile” the church, there is really no feeling from Fabri or any other pilgrim- author for that matter that their presence takes away any of the sacred site’s spiritual value.
Much of Fabri’s actual description of the Eastern Christian sects has to do with the locations of their chapels in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. The Franciscans, for example,
“have the best and most holy places in the church, for they own the keys of the most precious sepulcher and cave of the Lord Jesus.”38 The Greeks also hold important territory within the church, as they “have the chief place in that holy church, that is, the choir and head of the whole Anastasis.”39 The Georgians
own Mount Calvary, and they always have a guardian of the holy rock shut up in the
church . . . They also own the place and cave of the Invention of the Holy Cross, and
three lamps therein, which, however, they seldom light. They also own the chapel
beneath Mount Calvary, wherein the Latin Kings of Jerusalem were buried.40
As was seen in the earlier discussion of Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulcher as sacred space, pilgrimage accounts from all periods tend to be filled with just this kind of detailed spatial description. In the sections on the Eastern Christians, spatial description is joined with accounts of sectarian religious beliefs and practices, giving the reader’s sense of the environment much greater depth.
37 Ibid. 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid. 40 Ibid., 134b.
Fabri mentions the specific “errors” of the Eastern sects, though not in much detail
and not in every case. He writes a good deal about the Greeks, saying for example that if it
were not for them, “[t]he other Eastern Christians would long ago have been brought back
to the unity of the church,” but does not give any information about their particular
religious “errors.”41 On the “peculiarly heretical” Jacobites, however, he is more
forthcoming. “They,” he says, “keep up the right of circumcision: they administer the
sacrament in both kinds to children at their mother’s breast, and labour under manifold
errors about the humanity of Jesus.” Of the “Indian Christians, or Abissini,” Fabri writes that
“they follow the Jews, Saracens, and Jacobites in observing the useless and damnable rite of
circumcision, and they brand their children on the face with a rod of hot iron, and do not
care to receive baptism with water.” Fabri’s description and analysis is unsystematic and
scattershot. He seems to have no specific agenda or program for his criticisms aside from
condemning Eastern error and implicitly praising Roman virtue. He is interested rather in
picking out features of Eastern Christianity that he thinks his reader might find interesting
or, even better, shocking.42
Early modern pilgrim-authors were also concerned with describing the beliefs and
practices of Eastern Christians, but with some significant differences based on the author’s
confessional identity. Generally, Catholic authors had less to say about Eastern Christians
and when the topic came up were usually much less specific in their descriptions.
Protestant pilgrim-authors, on the other hand, tended to spend much more time and
energy analyzing each of the Eastern Christen sects. Further, Protestant pilgrim-authors,
41 Ibid. 42 Though Fabri was not the only pilgrim-author to talk about the religious practices of Eastern Christian sects, I have used him here to stand in for the body of late medieval Jerusalem pilgrimage narratives.
much more so than Catholic pilgrim-authors, gave particular attention to the features of
Eastern Christian belief and practice that were also points of contention in the debates of the Reformation. In doing so, we can observe the Protestant pilgrim-authors struggling to define for themselves and their readers what it meant to be a Christian, not just in the context of the Christianity of the Latin West, but in the context of a much larger, and largely foreign, world Christianity. Catholic pilgrim-authors were in a much more secure position in many ways. They had a continuous tradition of engagement in the Holy Land and with
Eastern Christianity to anchor them, not to mention the permanent and official presence of the Franciscan mission in Jerusalem. None of these authors, however, were writing for a twenty-first century historian, and their thoughts and feelings as expressed in these text can be maddeningly opaque. In the following, as I try to clarify their meanings and intentions, I will focus on three of the more contentious Reformation controversies
(communion, baptism, and religious authority) to see how the pilgrim-authors use their depictions of Eastern Christians to explore, reinforce, and indeed build their own religious identity. The issues discussed by the protestant pilgrim-authors fall into three categories.
One has to do with those issues on which Protestants sided with Catholics against Eastern practice and belief; essentially, Western Christendom versus Eastern Christendom. The second is those issues on which Protestants agreed with the Eastern churches. Though rarely acknowledged specifically, Protestant pilgrim-authors often seem to be appealing to
an idea that the Eastern churches were at least in some things closer to the practices of the
earliest Christian church; essentially, God-given practice versus human invention. The third category holds those issues on which Protestants disagreed with both Catholics and the
Eastern Christian churches; us versus the world.
The Sacraments
According to the Thomistic definition, sacraments were signs “of a sacred thing in so far as it sanctifies men.”43 They were means, supposed to be based on scripture, by which the
Church distributed God’s grace to the worthy faithful.44 The theology surrounding the
sacraments of the medieval Church fluctuated a great deal. By the later Middle Ages,
however, the formula of seven sacraments (baptism, confirmation, matrimony, extreme
unction, penance, Communion, and Holy Orders) established by Peter Lombard and
promoted by Thomas Aquinas had gained wide acceptance, being affirmed as an article of
faith in 1439 at the Council of Florence.45
Both aspects of the traditional definition of sacraments, that they were said to be
based on scripture and that they could be earned, were problems for the reformers. To the
first point, the reformers were keen to hold the traditional sacraments up to what they saw
as the pure light of scripture and abandon anything that did not conform. To the second
point, that of merit, the reformers insisted that the grace of salvation was given to
humanity entirely unmerited. God’s grace could not be given by a human institution like the
Church, much less earned or won.
If, as the reformers maintained, the sacraments were not what the Roman Church
said they were, what were they? Most reformers were in agreement that any true
sacrament was comprised of a promise from God with an added sign of that promise.
Luther wrote that “to every promise of his, God usually adds a sign as a memorial.”46 Calvin
agreed, saying that a sacrament is “an outward sign by which the Lord seals on our
43 Mark Greengrass, The European Reformation, c. 1500-1618 (London: Longman, 1998), 3. 44 Euan Cameron, The European Reformation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 156. 45 Ibid. 46 Quoted in ibid., 157.
consciences the promise of his good will.”47 For the reformers, the Roman Church was
wrong to say that sacraments worked based on the proper action and words of the priest
and the correct intention in the believer. This tripartite formula left out faith. Even
sacraments with scriptural support were meaningless, empty words and actions without
faith. As Euan Cameron has put it, being expressions of faith and scripture, sacraments
“were, in effect, simply a different way of setting forth the Word.”48 Ultimately, the
mainstream of the Reformation kept only two of the traditional sacraments, communion
and baptism, discarding the others for lack of scriptural foundation. How communion and
baptism were enacted, however, became crucially important in defining confessional
identity in succeeding decades. In Susan Karant-Nunn’s words, “The way these two
sacraments were carried out symbolized the differences in religious leaders’ thought and
came to be the most prominent features by which emerging denominations were
recognized and described.”49
Communion
The basis for communion practice was unarguably Biblical. There was, however, very little agreement among the reformers as to the proper form that practice should take. About all they could agree on was that the Catholic rite must be abolished.50 A number of specific
features of the Roman mass were universally odious. First, was the idea that participating
in the communion ritual could in any way spiritually benefit the living or the dead. By 1519,
Luther was adamant that the mass was not a “good work” and conferred no merit on the
communicant. Further, and this will be a major point brought up by Protestant pilgrim-
47 Quoted in ibid. 48 Ibid. 49 Susan Karant-Nunn, Reformation of Ritual, 50. 50 Cameron, European Reformation, 161-164.
authors in describing Eastern Christians, the reformers rejected the practice of withholding the Eucharistic wine from lay Christians. Not only was this unbiblical, Jesus had provided both bread and wine, body and blood, to his disciples at the last supper, it also ran counter to the practices of the early Church and added to the sense of priestly superiority that the reformers further denied. Though the reformers all rejected the Catholic practice of providing lay people communion only once per year, they did not agree on how often one should receive communion. Luther and Calvin argued for weekly communion, while
Zwingli thought three or four times a year sufficient.
Arguments over actual presence were also highly contentious. Again, all reformers rejected the scholastic doctrine that through the ritualized words and actions of the priest the insensible substance of the bread and wine are truly changed to the body and blood of
Christ even while the accidents or species, that is the sensible aspects of the bread and wine, remain the same. What they wanted in its place was another matter. Luther held that the wine and bread on the altar were both really bread and wine and really the body and blood of Christ at the same time, just as with the dual nature of Christ himself. Zwingli took an almost opposite view, claiming that in calling the bread his “body” and the wine his
“blood,” Jesus was not being literal but rather using figures of speech. Christ’s presence in the Eucharistic elements was, for Zwingli, entirely spiritual. For our purposes, the intricacies of the reformers’ debates on the Eucharist are less important than the fact that there was a variety of opinion alongside the unifying theme of rejecting Catholic practice.
Many Protestant pilgrim-authors describe the sacramental beliefs and practices of
Eastern Christians at an almost ethnological distance. Wolfgang Müntzer, for instance, merely says that the Abyssinians, “ in their Sacrament of the Altar, use leavened bread, and
furnish [the sacrament] to young and old in both forms.”51 The Greeks, Müntzer says, “use unleavened bread for the Sacrament of the Altar, . . . do not mix water with the wine, . . . and they give to the old and to young Children the Sacrament in both kinds.”52 In his description of the Armenians, Rauwolf presents a running list of beliefs and practices, even pointing out a few matters on which they agree with Lutherans: “They will not eat unclean foods, as the
Old Testament forbids; young and old without difference are allowed to receive communion; their children are baptized in the name of the Holy Trinity; of the articles of our [Lutheran] Christian belief, they agree that preaching, singing, and rituals in their religious services should be in the common speech so that they might be understood by everyone.”53
Where most protestant pilgrim-authors are largely content with brief cultural voyeurism, as a Lutheran minister, Salomon Schweigger was highly concerned with matters of practical theology. More than any other pilgrim-author, he used his description of Abyssinian Christian practice to make larger theological points for his readers. The
Abyssinians “give young children, from the time they are born, communion in both forms just as the Greeks and Bohemians.”54 They do so based on their understanding of the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John: “He is the bread of life; whoever eats this bread, he has life.
51 Müntzer, Reyßbeschreibung, 19. “Brauchen sie in ihrem Sacrament deß Altars/geseuert Brodt/damit sie Jung und Alt in Beyderley gestalt versehen.” 52 Ibid., 18. “Brauchen sie gesäuert Brod zum Sacrament deß Altars. . . sie mischen auch kein Wasser unter den Wein in der Messe . . . sie geben auch de alten und jungen Kindern/das Sacrament in Beyderley gestalt.” 53 Rauwolf, Aigentliche Beschreibung, 418. “Als das sie nit von unrainen Speisen/im alten Testament verbotten/essen: junge unnd alte ohne underschid lassen comunicieren: ihre Kinder im namen der Dreyfatigkeit tauffen: von den Articklen unsers Christlichen glaubens halten: predigen/singen/unnd verrichten ihren Gottesdienst inn gemeiner sprach/damit sie von jederman verstanden verden.” 54 Schweigger, Ein Newe, 293. “Sie reychen den jungen Kindern/so sie geboren werden/das Abendmal Christi in beyderley Gestalt…”
Therefore, those who do not eat, they do not have eternal life.”55 Without ever denying the
importance of the mass, Schweigger is quick to point out the Abyssinian (and Greek and
Bohemian) misconception. What Christ means, according to Schweigger, is that those who believe in him will have eternal life. Belief is the necessary condition, not the ingestion of wine and bread. The wine and bread are but symbols for belief in Christ, they do nothing in themselves. “They [Abyssinians] understand this to mean eating and drinking of the
Sacrament, there, however, Christ means belief in him, and says, as he does in other places:
The one who believes in him, he has eternal life; and contrary to this many people eat and
drink the body and blood of Christ more to conform to the law, than [to gain eternal] life.”56
Through his discussion of Eastern Christian beliefs and practices, Schweigger is at
the same time educating his readers on important, not to mention knotty and contentious,
Reformation debates. By dissecting the beliefs of religiously related but culturally very
different “others,” he explains and reinforces Lutheran doctrine. Such a discussion is only
possible by using the beliefs of other Christians for comparison. Further, because the
Abyssinians are more correct in their communion practice, in that they give the sacrament
in both kinds, Schweigger can make a finer distinction than would be possible with a more
common comparison with Catholic practice. In the process of combining ethnological
fascination with theological education he creates a certain sense of communitas, albeit
attenuated, between Lutheranism and Abyssinian Christianity.
55 Ibid. “Er sey das Brodt des Lebens/wer diß Brodt isst/der hat das Leben/ Ergo, wers nicht isst/der hat das Ewig Leben nicht.” 56 Ibid. “Sie von dem leiblichen essen und trinken im Sacrament verstehen/da doch Christus diese Reden alle von dem Glauben an ihn versteht/unnd sein Meinung ist/wies sonst anderßwo/Wer an ihn glaub/der hab das Ewig Leben/da hergegen viel den Leib und Blut Christi im Nachtmal essen und trinken/aber zum Gericht/und nit zum Leben.”
The clearest expression of the importance of proper Eucharistic practice as a defining character of Christian identity comes from Hans Jacob Breüning. After going through each of the Christian sects, he ends by pointing out that all Christians resident at
Jerusalem, with the significant exception of the “Franks, or papists, or Latins,” hold in common the practice of providing both bread and wine to their communicants. This, he claims, is in keeping with Biblical injunction and the practices of the early Church:
And in closing, it is important to note that for all the nine sects of Christians here,
aside from the Franks, papists, as the Latins are known, the other eight, although
they have other especially great heretical errors and differences, they in the East are
yet one and hold with the primitive Church, namely in that concerning the Eucharist
they communicate in both forms. And they do not want to weaken, alter, nor
improve with their own reason, the Testament and last command of our savior, and
lead Christ to school.57
Though he never mentions Lutheran Eucharistic practice, any Protestant reader would have clearly understood his meaning: The Catholics are in error; we Protestants are correct. Whatever else eastern Christians might misunderstand, on this matter they have surely maintained Christ’s own command and we stand with them against the “Latins.”
57 Breüning, Reyßbeschreibung, 237. “Und ist beschlüßlichen/von denen Neunerley Secten der Christen allhie/wol zu mercken/das ausserhalb der Francken/oder Bapisten/so Latini genant/die ubrigen Acht Secten/ob sie wol sonsten grosse Ketzerliche Irrthumb/und viel Spaltungen haben/doch in dem alle uberein stimmen/und das von der Primitiva Ecclesia, in Oriente behalten/das sie nämblich/das Abentmal belangend/bey der Einsatzung Christi verbleiben/in beyderley gestalt Communiciren, und also unsers Erlösers und Seligmachers Testament und letzten Willen/nicht zu Schwachen/zu Veranderen/noch ihrer Vernunffet nach zu verbessern/ unnd Christum in die Schuhl zu führen begeren.”
Baptism
Next to the Eucharist, baptism was the only Catholic sacrament maintained by the
reformers, but it was maintained with a difference. The traditional view of baptism was
that it cleansed the soul, removing the stain of original sin, with subsequent sins atoned for
through penance. For the reformers, the concepts of both baptism and original sin were
more robust and all encompassing. No human action, such as baptism, could in any way
mitigate the effects of original sin. For them, baptism was “the sacrament of penance.”58 As
Luther put it, baptism was a promise of salvation that gave the sign of “death and
resurrection, that is, full and complete justification.”59 Though it is not always clear in
Luther’s writings, among the mainstream reformers, baptism was not a mechanical
removal of sin but rather a scripturally validated sign that sin was no longer “imputed” to
the baptized Christian.60 The act of baptism itself did not accomplish anything, but was a sign of something, salvation, already accomplished through Christ’s sacrifice.
As with the Eucharist, arguments over proper baptismal practice divided the
Reformation movement. Unlike arguments over the Eucharist, however, there were
essentially only two sides. On the one hand were those like Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli who
argued for the continuation of the traditional practice of infant baptism. On the other hand
were those, known as Anabaptists, who held infant baptism as meaningless and reserved
the ritual for adult believers alone. The Anabaptists saw baptism as a covenant between the
believer and God. The baptism of infants, by nature incapable of understanding the
preached word of God or the implications of entering into such an agreement, was
58 Cameron, European Reformation, 159. 59 Quoted in ibid. 60 Ibid.
therefore invalid. Exactly what the ritual of baptism meant for adults was widely disputed
among Anabaptist sects, but their rejection of the efficacy of infant baptism was universal
and their most definitive feature to outsiders.
Eastern Christian rites of baptism were often quite different from those in the West.
Many Eastern sects practiced both water baptism and baptism by fire. Wolfgang Müntzer
says that the Abyssinians, “in the place of baptism, they burn a cross on the forehead.”61
Rauwolf takes a more theological and educational tone. Describing the Jacobites, who also
practiced baptism by fire, he says, “They allow their children to be baptized with fire, small
crosses being marked on their temples or foreheads, as in the words of John the Baptist in the third book of Matthew, where speaking of Christ he says, ‘The one who will come after me, he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.’”62 Significantly, perhaps because
he was not a religious scholar, Rauwolf does not go on to analyze the theological
appropriateness of the Jacobite’s baptismal practices. Schweigger, however, does take the
opportunity to instruct his readers in Biblical literature. Describing the practice of the
Abyssinians, he says:
Along with [water] baptism, they use fire baptism. They burn on both temples and
on the forehead, because John [the Baptist] said to the Jews, that Christ, who would
come after him, would baptize them with fire and the Holy Spirit. That is, he would
impart his gifts on the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit would come over the
Apostles in the form of tongues of flame and they would be filled up with his gifts.
61 Müntzer, Reyßbeschreibung, 19. “An der statt der Tauffe Creutz an die Stirn brennen.” 62 Rauwolf, Aigentliche Beschreibung, 421-422. “[Sie] lassen ihre Kindlein mit fewr tauffen/unnd ihnen an die stürnen oder schläff ain kreutzlein machen/den worten Joan: Baptistae nach/Matth: am 3. Da er redt von Christo/ unnd spricht. Der nach mir kommet/der wirt euch mit dem heiligen Geist unnd mit fewr tauffen.”
Several told us that they make marks with garlic and other pungent materials on the
head and near the eyes.63
Unlike in the above section on the Eucharist, Schweigger does not here give a lesson in
practical theology. There was, after all, little danger that his European readers would take
up the practice of fire baptism. And though he also points back to the Bible as Rauwolf does,
he goes beyond merely highlighting the connection between religious practice and Biblical
text to exegesis. Schweigger gives the text to his reader, then explicates its meaning. Again,
as with the Eucharist, the door to this particular bit of exegesis, explaining the text of
Matthew, is opened only because of the larger task of describing Eastern Christianity to
Western Christians. Though never explicit, emphasis on such a (from the western Christian
perspective) bizarre practice highlights the common practice, if not theological understanding, of baptism in Catholic and Protestant western Christianity.
Religious Authority
The authority of the pope was one of the central pillars on which the later medieval
Western Church was built. By 1300, the Bishop of Rome effectively claimed a “God-given
universal monarchy in the world as the vicar (substitute) of Christ,” based on the idea of an
unbroken succession from St. Peter.64 Even though the world dominating vision of the
popes was never fully realized, they were the heads of a vast, transnational, bureaucratic
institution that wielded immense power in Western Europe. The fingers of the Church, and
63 Schweigger, Ein Newe, 293. “Neben der Tauff gebrauchen sie auch der Feuertauff/daß sie an beyder Schläfen unnd vornen and der stern sich brennen/dieweil Johannes zu den Juden sagt/daß Christus/der nach ihm kommen werd/der werd sie tauffen mit feuer und den H. Geist/das ist/er werd seine Gaben außtheilen am H. Pfingsttage/wenn der H. Geist über die Apostel wird kommen in Gestalt der feurigen Zungen/und sie mit seinen Gaben erfüllen/Etliche zeigen an/daß sie solche Mäler mit Knoblach unnd andern scharpffen Materien ritzen für Haupt und Augenflüß.” 64 MacCulloch, The Reformation, 29.
thus the pope, were in all the pies of Europe and provided a blanket of relative unity over a
crazy-quilt of cultural, linguistic, and political variety.
As in nearly any large institution, there were divisions, factions, cults of personality,
and dissension. All but three Renaissance popes were Italians, and many came from the
same coterie of families, creating a nepotistic and dynastic factionalism that many
contemporary critics found objectionable.65 There was a long tradition of criticizing and
critiquing various elements of the Church. Sometimes those criticisms led to significant change and other times those in charge labeled the critics as heretics and did everything they could to squash them. Tendencies for power to concentrate in the hands of the Popes were counteracted to some extent beginning in the fourteenth century by a trend toward conciliarism. This movement claimed that authority rightly lay in the hands of the Church as a whole, represented practically by general councils.66 In the century or so immediately
preceding the Reformation, conciliarism was by no means a united philosophy of religious
authority. Though conciliar theorists did not question the spiritual authority of the pope as
the successor to St. Peter, they did debate the pope’s administrative authority over the
western Church as a whole. The Council of Constance decreed (Haec Sanctus Synodus) in
1415 that at certain times the authority of general Church councils exceeded that of the
Pope.67 By the mid-fifteenth century, Popes had recognized the threat to their authority
and stopped calling general councils. With the end of the Great Schism and the renewal of
papal authority, strict conciliarism waned as a practical solution to the problems of the
Church. A somewhat watered-down conciliarism, however, continued to carry some
65 Cameron, European Reformation, 32. 66 Greengrass, European Reformation, 9. 67 Ibid., 27.
weight. In 1511, a small group of conciliarist, reform-minded cardinals convened themselves at Pisa, forcing Pope Julius II to in turn call the Fifth Lateran Council, which met from 1512 to the eve of the Reformation in 1517.
In the early debates of the Reformation, before Pope Leo X’s excommunication of
Luther, Church authorities held the position that Luther was challenging papal authority.
Luther did not see it this way. Initially, he saw himself as calling for the pope to exercise his authority to correct the Church’s excesses for the good of all believers.68 From the very
beginning, however, and despite his protestations to the contrary, many in the papal power
structure saw Luther as essentially a conciliarist and attacked him on those terms. As it
became clear that he would not be able to move the Pope and the papal advisors with his
theological arguments, Luther asked for a Church council to be convened to resolve the
dispute. Nothing could have been more provocative for the papalists. This confirmed their
suspicions and the gloves came off.
At the Leipzig Disputation in the summer of 1519, Luther debated Johann Eck, a
theologian and champion of papalism. Eck immediately took Luther to task on his position
regarding authority in the Church. Luther had many times expressed admiration for the
Bohemian “heretic” Jan Hus, who was condemned and executed by the Council of
Constance in 1415. Eck worked Luther into a rhetorical corner, getting him to admit that as
many of Hus’ claims were correct, the council had erred in condemning him. This was a
devastating blow and one of the decisive moments in the irreversible separation between
Luther and the Roman Church. From that point, at least as far as the official Roman Church
was concerned, Luther had cut himself off from the only two options for legitimate
68 MacCulloch, Reformation, 123.
authority. Not only had he shown his anti-papal stripes in his writings up to that point, now
in debate he had also shown himself to believe that ultimately even duly constituted
Church councils could not be trusted.69
So, if neither the Pope nor Church councils held authority, who or what did? In a
word for Luther, scripture. Thanks to the push and pull of debate in the early years of the
Reformation, Luther came to the realization that the only valid measure against which the
Church should be judged was the Bible. According to Luther, the fundamental problem with
the Church, whether embodied in Pope or council, was that human institutions had set up
themselves and their decrees as superior to God and his word. On this idea, any doctrine
must be judged against scripture and be rejected if found inconsistent.70 To anyone who has ever experienced disagreement over the meaning of a text, the problem with this position is immediately obvious. As with any other text, scripture is open to limitless interpretations. To some extent this problem has yet to be solved (witness the multiplicity of Protestant Christian sects) and the specifics of how scripture was applied is not important for our purposes here. Though its implementation varied greatly, Luther’s general position on the superiority of scripture above all was widely held by other
Reformation leaders and was a defining characteristic of all Protestant theology.
Protestants, especially in the first century of the Reformation, may not have always known who they were religiously, but they knew whatever else that they did not follow the Pope.
It is not surprising therefore the Protestant pilgrim-authors give attention to the question of religious authority in Protestant descriptions of eastern Christians. When describing the “Latins,” who are often first on the list of Christian groups present in
69 Cameron, European Reformation, 101. MacCulloch, Reformation, 125. 70 Cameron, European Reformation, 136-7.
Jerusalem, their allegiance to the Pope is one of the first characteristics mentioned.71 For
example, Hans Jacob Breüning writes: “The Latins, or rather Franks as they are commonly
called by the Turks, acknowledge the Pope at Rome as the ultimate head of the Christian
Church.”72 Also with the Greeks, the next Christian sect in line, religious authority is the
first matter treated. “The Greeks,” he says, “ do not recognize the Pope as the head of the
Christian Church, but rather have in that place their own patriarchs, as at Constantinople
they have Jeremiah, Sylvester at Alexandria, Joachim at Antioch, and Germanus here at
Jerusalem.”73 “The Armenians,” according to Wolfgang Müntzer, “are nearly the same as us
in that they do not ask after the Pope, but have their own top priests and patriarchs to
whom they render obedience.”74 Breüning makes a similar observation on the Armenians,
strengthening their connection with Lutheranism: “Regarding religion, they do not hold
with the Roman Pope, but rather have their own prelates, matching in many points with the
Evangelicals, yet having besides that not a few errors.”75 Here the similarity between
eastern Christians and “Evangelicals” is drawn quite strongly. The two groups may not
71 Hans Jacob Breüning provides a representative list of Christian sects resident at Jerusalem (printed vertically): “1 Latini oder Francken. 2 Griechen. 3 Surianer. 4 Georgianer. 5 Armenier. 6 Nestorianer. 7 Jacobiten. 8 Abyssiner. 9 Maroniten.” (234) 72 Ibid. “Latini, so sonst in gemein von den Türken Franci genant/die erkennen den Babst zu Rom/für dz oberst Haupt der Christlichen Kirchen.” 73 Ibid. “Die Griechen/die recognosciren den Bapst nit/für das Haupt der Christlichen Kirchen/ sondern haben an desselben statt ihre eigne Patriarchen/als zu Constantinopoli damalen Jeremiam, Zu Alexandria Sylvestrem, zu Antiochia Joachimum, und alhie zu Hierusalem, Germanum.” 74 Müntzer, Reyßbeschreibung, 18-19. “Die Armenier sein aber in ihrem Glauben uns fast gleich/besonderen daß sie nach dem Bapst nichts fragen/haben aber einen Obersten Priester oder Patriarchen dem sie Gegorsam leisten…” 75 Breüning, Orientalische Reyß, 235. “Die Religion betreffend/halten sie nichts auff den Römischen Bapst/haben hingegen ihre eygene Praelaten, vergleichen sich in vielen Puncten mit den Evangelischen/haben doch darneben nich geringe irrthumb.” Interestingly, in the same section, Breüning relates that he and his travelling companion, Jean Carlier de Pinon, dressed themselves as Armenians to better blend in as they made their way from Rhodes to Jerusalem.
agree on much, but that general disagreement actually heightens the impact of those few
matters on which they do agree. It is almost as if the Protestant authors are saying, “see,
even heretics know that the Pope should not be considered the head of the Church.”
Several authors comment on the odd situation of the Maronite Christians. As
Breüning writes, although the Maronites “now profess themselves to the Roman Church. . . .
they nevertheless follow the practice of providing communion in both kinds.”76 Rauwolf
expands on this idea in his description of the Maronites. They used to follow the heretical
teachings of Macharius, who claimed that Christ only had a single nature but have since
entered into communion with the Roman Church. “Despite this,” he continues, “they
maintain the practice of providing lay people with communion in both forms, as nearly all
nations do, following the words of our Lord Christ’s injunction. Otherwise they follow the
Roman teaching more than any other nation.”77 Again, proper Eucharistic practice is
presented as a defining characteristic of any Christian community, and this is a
characteristic that Protestants share with eastern Christians very much contrary to
Catholic practice. Particularly in relation to the unique position of the Maronites, there is an
undercurrent of reproach toward Rome. A reader could take the Protestant pilgrim/
76 Breüning, Orientalische Reyß, 236-237. “…und bekennen sich jetzmalen zur Römischen Kirchen. Aber nichts desto weniger reichen sie den Leyen das Nachtmal in beyder gestalt.” 77 Rauwolf, Aigentliche Beschreibung, 426. “Auser disen allen findt man noch ein andere sort der Christen/die anfengklich von Marone dem Ketzer Maronitae seind genennet worden: Der nit mehr dann ein natur/verstand unnd werk in Christo gesetzet/nach der opinion des Ketzers Macharij, dem er in disem fleißig nachgefolget: haben aber die mittler zeit verlassen/unnd sich endtlich widerumb begeben inn den gehorsam der Römischen Kirchen. Unnd ob sie schon noch darunder seind/raichens gleichwol den layen das Nachtmal inn bayderlay gestalt/wie fast andere Nationes alle/nach den worten der einsatzung unsers Herrens Christi. Sunst volgends der Römischen lehr/mehr alß jrgend ein andere Nation.”
authors as pointing obliquely to Catholic hypocrisy in accepting Maronites, a group that
differs in important ways as to practice, while rejecting Protestants as heretics.
The Greeks
Rather than discuss Greek religion as part of his description of Jerusalem as most early modern pilgrims did, Salomon Schweigger devotes an entire chapter, over ten pages including illustrations, to that subject.78 Schweigger, not surprisingly given his theological
training, is much more concerned with religious questions than any other Protestant
pilgrim-author. But there is even more to Schweigger’s particularly strong interest in all things Greek. During his time at the University of Tübingen, Schweigger studied with
Martin Crusius, perhaps the greatest German philhellene of the early modern period.
Crusius taught Greek at Tübingen for nearly fifty years (1559-1607), and he was intimately involved in the correspondence between Lutheran theologians and the Greek Orthodox
Church in the later sixteenth century. In 1573, Schweigger’s predecessor as embassy chaplain, Stephan Gerlach, had delivered letters from Crusius and Jakob Andreae, professor of theology at Tübingen, to Jeremias II Tranos, the Greek Patriarch at Constantinople.79 This
initial contact sparked an eight-year exchange concerning the theological positions of both
churches.
On May 24th, 1575, Gerlach presented a Greek translation of the Augsburg
Confession to Jeremias.80 Almost exactly a year later, on the 15th of May, 1576, the Greeks
delivered their response. It was not positive. Jeremias essentially accused the Lutherans of
78 Schweigger, Ein Newe, 211-222. 79 Dorothea Wendebourg, Reformation und Orthodoxie: Die Ökumenische Briefwechsel zwischen der Leitung der Württembergischen Kirche und Patriarch Jeremias II. Von Konstantinopel in den Jahren 1573-1581 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986), 14. 80 John Travis, "Orthodox-Lutheran Relations: Their Historical Beginnings" in Greek Orthodox Theological Review. 29 (Winter, 1984), 305.
being theological innovators, perhaps the most damning criticism possible. Writing the first
response to Jeremias, Andreas Osiander defended the Lutheran position: “We do not
innovate on any matter of faith, but believe and teach all that is written and contained in
the books of the prophets and apostles. . . . Nothing, in fact, happens to be more ancient, or
true, or simple, or certain than this teaching.”81 The Patriarch would not agree, and the
back-and-forth continued, with the Lutherans repeatedly pressing Jeremias to the point of
annoyance, through the end of the decade. In 1581, the Patriarch refused to discuss the
matters any further: “We request that from now on you cease to burden us by writing
about these things. . . . we ask that you relieve us of these concerns. Go about your own way,
and no longer write us about dogmatic issues, but correspond only if you should desire to
do so for friendship’s sake. Farewell.”82 The Lutheran reformers seem to have hoped that
they could parlay their most fundamental area of agreement, the pope’s lack of authority in
the Christian Church, into a wider accord. As the likelihood of achieving that goal faded, the
Lutheran correspondents turned to increasingly strident apologetics: “With God’s help, we
will defend our opinion by presenting not what we have dreamt up, but the authentic
exposition and interpretation of the words received from the holy scriptures.”83
Schweigger’s description of Greek religion can be seen as a direct continuation and restatement of the 1574-1581 debate. It is equally, however, a didactic tool for his readers.
In picking apart in some detail Greek errors, Schweigger also sets out Lutheran orthodoxy
in a less controversial way than he could with a polemical attack on Catholic practice. To
81 Quoted in ibid., 313. 82 Quoted in ibid., 314. 83 Quoted in ibid.
some extent then, the Greeks end up being used as a foil for an exposition of Lutheran
doctrine.84
Schweigger starts by saying that knowledge of Greek religion has spread in Europe
due to the patriarchs’ many letters to the scholars of Tübingen. From that correspondence
it has become obvious that the Greeks are deeply stuck, “over their ears” in fact, in
superstition and misunderstanding.85 Schweigger, as befits his status as a well-educated
Lutheran minister, is much more concerned than most other pilgrim-authors were with theological intricacies. The Greeks are mistaken on many points, but their most fundamental error, according the Schweigger, concerns justification. Simply put, the Greeks persist in the belief that works such as fasting will earn them spiritual benefits.86 Further, they insist on putting their faith in the intercession of “the prophets, patriarchs, angels, archangels, apostles, martyrs, [and] the holy deceased matrons,” rather than focusing solely on Christ “the mediator and only advocate.”87 This proves that they have no confidence in
Christ. Schweigger is particularly critical of the excessive esteem given to the Virgin Mary.
By calling on her before her son, he says, they “tread on Christ with their feet.”88
He goes on to criticize the Greek’s use of icons in worship. They claim, Schweigger
says, not to worship the image itself, but rather the holy person “denoted” (bedeutet
84 The modern analysis of the debate between the Lutherans and the Greeks suggests that the biggest bone of contention was filioque, an issue that Schweigger does not mention, giving further weight to the idea that in talking about the Greeks, Schweigger was really taking aim at Catholicism. 85 Schweigger, Ein Newe, 211. 86 Ibid., 211-212. For more, see Schweigger’s discussion of fasting with the Greek Patriarch of Jerusalem, 288-289. 87 Ibid., 212. 88 Ibid.
werden) by the image.89 But even so, in this they show themselves to prefer Saint Basil to
the prophets and the scriptures. Here Schweigger goes into some theological detail on this
point. The Greeks say that they do not worship the saints as God, but as beloved servants of
God, and they adore God alone, using the precise theological terminology latreuticos (latria
in Latin, meaning the adoration of God alone).90 The Greeks revere the Virgin Mary and the
saints in descending order of reverential intensity. Here again, Schweigger uses theological
terminology: hyperdulian and dulian.91 They believe God will listen to the entreaties of the
mother of God, “as if she were the stool of grace through whom we come to grace from God
the Almighty; or as if Christ had commanded: Whatever you would ask in the name of the
father and in faith on my beloved mother, that I will give to you.”92 What is more, the icons
are crude and ugly, not even aesthetically pleasing. The paintings of Christ, the Virgin Mary,
the saints, fathers and martyrs of the church, “show no art, but rather are painted clumsily
and awkwardly.”93 Schweigger sums up his description of the Greek iconography with a harsh condemnation: “They are blind and pray to blind images and idols. God have mercy on them and open their, and all, unseeing eyes.”94
Next, Schweigger tackles an issue close to his own heart; preaching among the
Greeks. The Greeks only preach during Lent and while their services are performed in
89 Ibid. 90 The terms refer to the specific adoration given to the Trinity. 91 Dulia is usually translated as adoration and refers to the adoration of saints. Hyperdulia is a heightened form or expression of adoration reserved for the Virgin Mary. 92 Schweigger, Ein Newe, 212-213. “. . . item daß Gott woll ir Gebet erhören umb der Mutter Gottes willen/als wann sie der Gnadenstul wer/durch welchen bey Gott dem Almechtigen zu Gnaden kommen/oder als wann Christus befohlen hett: Was ihr den Vatter im Namen und im vertrawen auff mein liebe Mutter bitte werdet/das wil ich euch geben.” 93 Ibid., 213. 94 Ibid. “. . . in Summa/sie seynd blind/und beten blinde Bilder und Götzen an/Gott erbarm sich ihrer/und öffne inen und allen verblendten die Augen.”
“pure or fine” Greek, their preachers use “coarse” Greek in speaking to their congregations.
Even so, preaching is most often done in the afternoon, “as if it was esteemed with all diligence thereafter, so that no one might come, or so that if anyone were to attend, that he would be kept from hearing and learning by sleep, and so that the preached word and seed of the divine word bring decay and no fruit.”95 Though he does not mention Lutheran preaching, Schweigger’s implication would certainly have been clear to his readers. The
Greeks have lost their way, not only with putting excessive emphasis on the intercessory powers of saints and their images, but in relegating preaching to such a lowly status they do not comprehend the true value of scripture. Though he does not come out and say it, the reader would understand that this contrasted with Protestants, who had rediscovered
Gospel preaching’s proper place at the center of Christian life.
Nearly all pilgrim-authors expressed great interest in the ceremonies surrounding the sacrament of communion. Schweigger was no exception in his analysis of Greek religion. First, he says that they give the sacrament in both kinds to the common people, and even stir the bread in with the wine and serve it to the communicants with a silver spoon.96 He notes the controversy over using leavened bread, as the Greeks do, or unleavened bread, as was common in the West. In their version of Mass, the Greeks mix many practices and the whole service is “idle ceremonies and pomp with singing, reading, riches, prostration, and particularly the embellishment of priestly garments.”97
Furthermore, Schweigger says that they see the sacrament of the altar as a sacrifice for the
95 Ibid. “Die Predig wird gewönlich nach Mittag angestellt/nicht anders/als wenn es mit allem fleis darauff angesehen wer/damit niemand dazu soll kommen/oder so ja jemand dieselbige besucht/daß er durch den Schlaff am hören unnd lernen verhindert werde/und also das gepredigt Wort unnd Samen Göttlichs Worts verderb und kein frucht bringen.” 96 Ibid., 215. 97 Ibid.
living and the dead, using the theological term ex opere operato, meaning that the very act of the sacrament itself produces grace in the recipient regardless of the intention of the officiant. This is a grave misunderstanding as far as Schweigger is concerned: “[It is] entirely contrary to the institution of Christ, where he ordered that one should eat and drink the body and blood of Christ, but not make of it an offering.”98 Even given this error, however, the Greeks should be praised for following Christ’s injunction to maintain, as
Lutherans did, communion in both kinds, “and not severed or halved.”99
That is not Schweigger’s last word on the subject though. What he gives with one hand, he takes away with the other: “But against this is their malpractice of giving the
Lord’s supper to young children (just like the Hussites in Bohemia) that the children receive just with the belief in the Lord’s Supper in which they were baptized.”100 They base their practice on Jesus’ injunction in the sixth chapter of John, where he said, “He who does not eat of the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, has no life.”101 They conclude from this, that in order for anyone, including a child, to be saved (selig) they must also be blessed with the flesh and blood of Christ. Schweigger is quick to correct this misunderstanding, however, pointing out that in the same chapter Christ speaks of the
98 Ibid., 216. “. . . welches dann der Einsatzung Christi gar entgegen/da beholfen wird/man sol essen unnd trinken den Leib und Blut Christi/und nicht opffern.” 216 99 Ibid. “Sie seyn aber darinn zu loben/daß sie das nachtmal Christi gantz behalten/nach Christi Einsatzung/dann sie es in beyderley Gestalt reychen/und nicht zertrennen oder halbiern.” 100 Ibid. “Hinwider aber ist dieser Mißbrauch zu ververffen/daß sie auch den jungen Kindern des HERREN Nachtmal reychen und sprechen: (gleich wie auch die Hussiten in Böhem) daß die Kinder eben mit dem Glauben des HERRER Nachtmal empfahen [modern: empfangen]/in welchem sie getaufft werden.” 101 Ibid. “Werdet ihr nicht essen das Fleisch des Menschen Sohns/und trinken sein Blut/so habe ihr kein Leben.”
spiritual benefit of belief (der Geistlichen Niesung des Glaubens).102 The idea is that merely
taking communion is not enough for blessedness or salvation, one must above all believe.
So, many people partake of the body and blood of Christ who are not brought to
blessedness thereby, but merely brought to judgment (Gericht).103 That children are unfit
to receive the sacrament, one can conclude from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, where
he writes, “Man judges for himself.”104 The sacrament is a tool for the Christian to reflect on
the Lord’s death and on his own sinfulness. But a child cannot judge, understand, or reflect
on its own sin, and it also cannot comprehend the difference between the food of the altar
and regular food, much less understand the death of the Lord. “Therefore,” concludes
Schweigger, “the Greeks go against God’s word when they impart the Lord’s Supper to
children.”105
Schweigger next tackles baptism and chrismation. On these points also, the Greeks are mistaken. They baptize their children in the name of the trinity and dip them in water three times and then daub them with chrism, which they believe to be nearly equal in power to the baptism itself. This, according to Schweigger, is in no way be supported by scripture and was therefore “conceived by man.”106 If one is willing to build on such “sandy
ground,” Schweigger goes on, thousands of sacraments could be instituted. Merely being
smeared with chrism makes no one a Christian, he says. This again fits well with the
Protestant teaching against any for of works righteousness.
102 Ibid. “Christum essen und trinken/unnd welche Christum also niesen im Glauben/die haben das Ewig Leben.” 103 Ibid. 104 Ibid. “Der Mensch prüfe sich selbst.” 105 Ibid. “Ergo, thun die Griechen wide Gottes Wort/daß sie den Kindern des HERREN Nachtmal mittheilen.” 106 Ibid., 217. “. . . sondern von Menschen erdacht ist worden.”
After a few pages detailing the administrative structure of the Greek Church,
Schweigger throws in a paragraph about the relationship between the Turks and Christians
in Turkish lands. Schweigger writes that he “cannot allow it to go unmentioned, something
that would certainly be seen as a marvel in Germany; the Turks allow the Greeks and other
Christians to perform their religious services unhindered.”107 Not only is this surprising in
itself, but when contrasted with the situation in Christendom Schweigger is gob smacked.
“How many places are there in Christendom among many potentates, where Evangelical
Christians cannot perform their devotions, but rather are chased away and expelled. The
Turk does not do that. He allows each group to remain uninhibited in its beliefs.”108
Schweigger says no more about this, but the significance is clear. The reader should be both
amazed and ashamed that Christians are allowed more religious freedom and toleration
under an infidel tyrant than they are among their fellow Christians.
Schweigger was not the only one to notice this disjunction. The pilgrimage narrative
of the Swiss Protestant surgeon and pilgrim-author Hans Jakob Amman was published at
Zurich twice, in 1618 and again in 1630. The two editions are quite similar, but there are some revealing differences as well. For instance, in the section on the variety of Christian sects resident in Jerusalem, the 1630 edition adds a paragraph in which Amman wonders at how such a motley mix of religions and sects can coexist in relative peace under the tyranny of the infidel Turkish Sultan. “It is greatly to be wondered at concerning God’s
107 Ibid., 221. “Diß kan ich aber nicht ungemeldt lassen/welches billich für ein Wunder im Teutschland mag gehalten werden/daß die Griechen und andere Christen ihre Gottesdienst unnd Andacht unverhindert von den Türcken verrichten.” 108 Ibid. “Wie viel Ort seyn in der Christenheit unter vielen Potentaten/da die Evangelischen Christen ihr Andacht nicht also können verrichten/sondern werden noch des Lands verjagt und vertrieben/das thut der Türck den Christen nicht/wie gemeldt/er lest ein jedes Volck in seinem Glauben unverhindert bleiben.”
order,” he observed, “that under such a un-Christian potentate, such a variety of people are found in such great numbers in his whole empire. From Christians, Jews, and others, all have such good protection and security under him. . . [A]nd what is more each one is freely allowed to practice his own belief and conscience.”109 Amman then goes on to make a rather odd statement about the proper response to religious oppression: “A person can excuse himself only with difficulty who, during a time of persecution and for the sake of this word and transitory benefit, burdens his conscience and does not yield, with this excuse: where was I supposed to go? Such a person acts contrary to the serene, clear word of God.”110 Amman seems to be saying here that for his religion’s sake he should have fled, and supports this idea by citing three New Testament passages. The first two are from
Matthew 10: verse 23, “When they would pursue you in this city, flee to another”; and verse
37, “Whoever loves their father or mother above me, they are not worthy of me.” The last is from Luke 9:62, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back will easily enter
God’s kingdom.”111 Amman advocates the idea that the oppressed Christian should not hesitate to leave his homeland and family behind in following his (or her?) conscience.
There is a place where Christians can live according to their own wills and though that place is ruled over by a non-Christian, it can be a refuge for the religious free-thinker.
109 Amman, Reiß in das Gelobte Land, 30. “Hoch ist sich zuverwunderen/ab der ordnung Gottes/daß under einem sölchen unchristlichen Potentaten/so vilerley Leuth in so grosser anzahl gefunden werden/in seinem ganzen Keyserthumb/von Christen/Juden und anderen/so guten schutz unnd schirm under ihm haben . . . und das mehr is/auch einem jeden sein Glauben und Gewissen zuüben/frey lassen wirt.” 110 Ibid. “Hiemit kan sich der jenige schwerlich entschuldigen/welcher in der zeit der verfolgung/umb deß zeitlichen unnd zergengklichen willen/beschwert sein Gewissen/und nit weichen thut/mit diesem fürwand/wo hab ich söllen hinziehen: Ein solcher thut zuwider dem heiteren klaren Wort Gottes.” 111 Ibid. “Wenn sie euch aber verfolgen werden in diser Statt/so fliehen in die ander. Wer Vatter oder Mutter liebet uber mich/der ist meinen nit wert. Niemand der sein hand an Plfug legt/unnd sicht zuruck/ist bequem zum Reich Gottes.”
This is a particularly striking passage because of Amman’s own experience of
religious persecution in Zurich. Originally from the town of Thalwil, Amman became a
citizen of Zurich in 1614, soon after he returned to Europe from the Near East. In 1634,
four years after the second edition of his pilgrimage narrative was published, Amman was
charged with heresy for spreading “erroneous opinions” and thus confounding “many
honest people.”112 After mounting a defense based heavily on his reading of scripture,
Amman was acquitted. Amman was called before the court again, however, in 1656. This
time he was charged with suggesting to several inebriated men in a bar that all people
would gain eternal life regardless of their beliefs or behavior. The charges stuck and
Amman spent three days in prison. He died, still in Zurich, two years later.113 Although
Amman’s legal troubles did not start until after the two editions of his narrative published
during his lifetime (another edition was published, again in Zurich, in 1678, twenty years
after his death) were released, the text of the 1630 edition indicates that he had perhaps
experienced the sting of oppression for expressing his religious opinions before.114
In 1603, a few years before Schweigger published his account and fifteen years
before the first edition of Amman’s narrative, Peter Villinger, a Swiss Catholic priest, wrote
a travel narrative detailing his time as a pilgrim in Jerusalem. As another educated and
112 Francisca Loetz, Dealings with God: From Blasphemers in Early Modern Zurich to Cultural History of Religiousness (London: Ashgate, 2009), 210. 113 Loetz, Dealings, 211. 114 This posthumous edition is available in electronic form from e-rara.ch. The literature on the historical development of religious toleration is large. Joseph Lecler’s Toleration and the Reformation, 2 vols. (New York: Association Press, 1960) and Henry Kaman’s The Rise of Toleration (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967) are still excellent starting places. More recent treatments of the subject such as the collection Tolerance and Intolerance in the European Reformation, ed. Ole Peter Grell and Robert Scribner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) and Perez Zagorin’s How the Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the West (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004) are also highly valuable introductions.
highly trained religious man, as well as the only Catholic pilgrim-author of the period to
describe Eastern Christian sects at any length, Villinger offers a useful comparative foil for
Schweigger’s account of the Greeks. Right off the bat, Villinger states that among all the
various types of people to be found in Jerusalem, Protestants were conspicuous by their
absence; “[A]t Jerusalem various people live, such as Turks, Moors, Jews, and almost all the
sects of Christians. I found no Lutherans there. They ask little after the holy city, as they
hold the praise of Christ as a sin.”115
Nikolas Christof Radziwill, the Polish count and convert from Lutheranism to
Catholicism, makes a similar point is his narrative published in German the same year as
Villinger’s. First he, like Villinger, says that many different types of Christian call Jerusalem home and they all have chapels in the Temple of the Holy Sepulcher in which they conduct their rituals and ceremonies. Protestants, however, are a notable exception to this rule. “No new preaching is found here,” he writes, “and though a small number of Germans and
French have visited, they do so only as tourists.”116 Radziwil then describes a scene similar
to one mentioned by Schweigger. He was in the Temple of the Holy Sepulcher with his
Franciscan guides when, through his interpreter, he fell into conversation with the son of
an Armenian bishop. Surrounded as they were by such a variety of Christian practice, the
Armenian asked Radziwil for his reaction. “I answered that I was pleased, pointing out that
although each sect had their own language and ceremonies, in the fundamental things, God
115 Villinger, Bilgerfahrt und Beschreibung, 44. “Zu Jerusalem inn der Statt wohnen allerley Volck/Türken/Mohren/Juden/und schier allerley Secten der Christen/dann allein kein Lutherischen hab ich da gefunden/die fragen der heyligen Statt wenig nach/so haltens das Lob Christi für Sünd.” 116 Radziwill, Hierosolymitanische Reyse, 109. “Allein kein lest sich allhie sehen/es kommen etliche aus Frankreich und Teutschland/ nur sehens wegen dahin/kein newer praedicant wirdt doch allda gefunden.”
be praised, they still agreed with the Catholics in the most important matters. From which
we can see that the Church has always been and still is united.”117 Radziwil says that he in
turn asked the Armenian whether he had “heard anything about the heretics God has
placed in our lands on account of our sins, the names of whom I told him. Namely:
Lutherans, Zwinglians, Arians, Anabaptists, and other heretical rabble.”118 The Armenian
asked whether these people were Christians, to which Radziwil said that they were
baptized and wanted to be called Christians.119 The Armenian
answered that he could not believe they were Christians since they did not travel to
the place in which Christ the Lord, after taking on mortal flesh, achieved our
salvation. Also, they have neither priests nor altars here on which to conduct their
offerings to the Lord God. For although these places are in the hands of the
heathens, it is still required that Christians of whichever sect and belief they are
come here to honor God and shame the heathens.120
The Armenian bishop’s son, and through his voice Radziwil also, makes a continuous
presence in Jerusalem a sine qua non of Christian identity.
117 Ibid., 110. “…darauff ich geantwortet/ich liesse sie mir wolgefallen: denn ob schon ein jegliche Landschafft mit underschiedlichen sprachen und caeremonien/Gott lobeten/stimten sie doch mit den Catholischen/in den fürnembsten sachen uberein: daher dann ersehen were/das allzeit ein Kirch gewesen/und noch sey…” 118 Ibid. “Under anderm Gespräch/als ich gefraget/ob er auch etwas von den Kezern gehöret hotte [sic]/so uber unsern Ländern/Gott der Herr unsere Sünde wegen vergehenget/deren Namen ich dann ihm erzelete/nemlich/Lutheraner/Zwinglianer/ Arrianer/Widertauffer/ unnd andere Kezergeschmeiß…” 119 Ibid. “…fragte er mich/ob sie auch Christen weren/ich sagte/sie weren getaufft/unnd wolten Christen geheissen werden…” 120 Ibid., 110-111. “[A]ntwortet er/er könte durchaus nit glauben/das sie Christen seyen/sintemal sie an das ort/in welchem Christus der Herr/nach angenommen sterblichen Fleisch/unser heil vollendet hat/nicht reiseten/allda auch weder Priester/noch Altar hetten/in welchem Gott dem Herren seyn Opffer könte geschehen.”
Through another encounter with an Eastern Christian, this time a Greek monk at the
monastery of St. Saba, Radziwil again takes a poke at Protestant “heresy.” This Greek monk
had apparently visited Poland several times and “had often seen heretics there and knew their customs and practices well.”121 He held them, however, to be “worse and more vicious
than the Jews. For, although the Jews had indeed crucified Christ, whom they did not
acknowledge as God, the heretics crucify him again both in their beliefs and their words, in
that they renounce his omnipotence and thus rob him of his godly honor.”122 Summing up
Radziwil says that “[i]t is a great solace that nothing of the heretics’ poison is to be heard in
these holy places.”123 These two stories from Radziwil are some of the most pointed
confessional polemic in this entire body of texts, from either the Protestant or Catholic side.
Radziwil glosses over the differences between Catholics and Eastern Christians in order to
emphasize Protestant waywardness, putting more emphasis on the absence of Protestants
than on the presence of Eastern Christians. The real enemies of Catholicism are not the
Armenians, Greeks, or Nestorians, all of whom understand the importance of Jerusalem as
the site of Jesus’ saving sacrifice, but the Protestants who, according to Radziwil (not to
mention a number of modern scholars), regard the Holy Land as a mere curiosity. Any
feeling of communitas based on shared European culture is dissipated by religious
antagonism.
121 Ibid., 111. “Solcher/nach dem er verstanden/wo von wir under uns sprach hielten/hat er angefangen zu erzahlen/er hab offt in Polen Kezer gesehen/ihre sitten und gebrauch weren ihme auch wolbekant…” 122 Ibid. “… aber heilte sie viel böser und arger als die Jüden. Dann diese hetten zwar Chrsitum gecreuziget/denen sie nit vor einen Gott heilten und erkandten: Die Kezer aber/so an in glauben/und mit Worten bekennen/creuzigen jn von newem/in dem sie seine Allmacht verlaugnen/und ihn seiner Göttlichen Her berauben.” 123 Ibid. “Das ist ein grosser Trost/das nichts von der Kerzereyen gifft in diesen H. örten gehöret wirdt.”
In sum, we see that both Protestant and Catholic pilgrim-authors used their discussions of eastern sects in defining confessional Christian identity. It is in these discussions that some of the clearest distinctions between Catholic and Protestant practice and belief are delineated. Describing eastern Christians, the other “Others,” provided a unique opportunity for confessional definition. By bouncing their different understandings of what constituted correct Christian behavior, playing with communitas and contestation, pilgrim-authors refined their (and their readers’) views of Christian identity.
Conclusion
In the process of building on, as well as reacting to and against, both medieval and contemporary Catholic forms of Holy Land pilgrimage, Protestant pilgrim-authors
developed a particularly and peculiarly Protestant strain of pilgrimage. It was a form of
pilgrimage that aligned with Protestant theology and reinforced a Protestant world view. It
helped define its practitioners as Protestants. Pilgrimage to Jerusalem connected
Protestant authors and readers to their Christian past and their non-Protestant Christian
contemporaries, at the same time providing them with the means to express, construct, and
bolster their own separate religious identities. Performing and writing about Holy Land
pilgrimage gave Protestant pilgrim-authors a venue for working out the intricacies of
Christian communitas and confessional identity. It is critically important to acknowledge
that they were truly pilgrim-authors. For, they performed a metamorphosis. They took something explicitly forbidden by religious authorities and turned it into a spiritually beneficial act. Navigating, negotiating that gray boundary between licit and illicit,
Protestant pilgrim-authors constructed a clearer picture of what it meant for them and their readers to be Christians.
In spite of denunciations of pilgrimage by early reformers, from their formal elements to the motivations expressed, these narratives conform to and buttress
Protestant theology and doctrine. Distancing the narratives from traditional pilgrimage by, among other techniques, wrapping Holy Land pilgrimage in a larger journey to the East, paradoxically allows them to support Protestant doctrine while still serving the interests and desires of readers for a religious or spiritual connection to Jerusalem. The narratives serve an important Protestant didactic function as well. The pilgrim-authors’ near constant
reference to Christian scripture and rehearsal of Biblical stories educate the reader in the
proper understanding of Biblical history and especially Jesus’ ministry, crucifixion, and resurrection. At the same time, through the citation of Biblical chapter and verse, the texts encourage a deeper engagement with the Biblical texts themselves. By confessional comparison, Catholic pilgrimage authors and publishers provide far fewer scriptural references and are much more narrowly focused on the performance of the Holy Land pilgrimage journey to the exclusion of travel to other destinations or in other forms. The different ways Protestants and Catholics performed and wrote about pilgrimage say a great deal about the aspects of religious identity they considered most definitive and definitional.
It is in the expression of these differences that we observe the process of raising barriers between related religious groups; that is, the process of confessionalization.
The city of Jerusalem itself is a character in these narratives as much as any of the
authors or their companions. Despite Protestant skepticism concerning sacred space, the
city’s spiritual gravity continued to draw pilgrims of all mainstream Protestant confessions.
To some extent this attraction could be interpreted as running contrary to Protestant teachings on God’s transcendence. In practice, however, Protestant pilgrim-authors again use their pilgrimage experience to support confessional concerns. On the one hand they completely divorce their brand of pilgrimage from any form of quantifiable spiritual benefit, especially indulgences. Further, using the Bible as a guidebook of sorts encouraged both the pilgrim and the reader to engage more fully and deeply with scripture, and particularly scripture dealing with Jesus’ ministry, persecution, execution, and resurrection. Because of its connection to the Bible, such an opportunity was not available with any other pilgrimage destination. For Protestant pilgrim-authors particularly, the Holy
Land was an object lesson in God’s just wrath at human iniquity. Jerusalem was unique in
this regard. It had been the chosen land for God’s chosen people, “flowing with milk and
honey” as the psalmists wrote. Now it lay in ruins, oppressed under infidel rule. Glorious
churches marking the sites of sacred events had been destroyed, desecrated, or worse,
turned into mosques, a warning to all Christians about the fragility of God’s patience with
sin. The pilgrim-authors meant to bring this lesson home, to share their experiences on the
printed page, to educate their readers with first-hand evidence in the hopes of avoiding the
consequences of human weakness and perfidy.
This mutual engagement with the Holy Land by means of the holy text, and with the
holy text by means of the Holy Land, is augmented and made available to the reader by the
common use of images. Images, however imperfectly, take on the role of and are stand-ins
for the land and sites themselves. The tension inherent in the back and forth between text
and land for the pilgrim-authors, and text and image for the readers, is productive, forcing the reader to delve more deeply and imaginatively into their evolving understanding of scripture, Biblical history, and their own Christian identity. For some, images may sate the desire to see for one’s self, for others they may goad or pique curiosity. In either case, they add a level of intensity to the reader’s experience not otherwise possible.
Catholic pilgrims had over a millennium of pilgrimage experience on which to draw
in placing themselves religiously within the wider context of world Christianity. As a new
expression of Christian belief and practice, the period of the Reformation was the first time
Protestants grappled with the question of their place in the larger corpus Christianorum.
The Protestant pilgrimage narratives examined here provide a glimpse into that process of
self-definition, of bouncing one’s self-image off the image of another, in order to clarify and
define that self-image. Though this process of defining the self through defining the “other” is rarely explicit and may have been largely unconscious, it is no less significant for understanding early attempts to develop a distinctly Protestant religious identity. The Holy
Land again offered a unique opportunity for this reflective self-definition. The presence there of many exotic forms of Christianity allowed for a more precise and detailed exploration of religious identity than was available from comparisons with Catholicism and
Islam.
The study of history is a game of constant reinterpretation. Texts such as the
Protestant pilgrimage narratives explored in the preceding pages have traditionally been seen as aberrations, as not representing the mainstream of Reformation thought. Such a view, however, mistakes rhetoric for reality. It replaces and privileges the theologian’s perspective for the common person’s. Theology and religion are not synonymous and religious identity is made of more than ivory tower doctrinal pronouncements. Emotional and spiritual attachments forged over centuries are not immediately torn asunder by anyone’s words, even those of men as undoubtedly influential as Martin Luther and John
Calvin.
Pilgrimage, a staple of medieval Christianity, continued to grip the religious imagination of Protestants, perhaps even more than Catholics, in the decades after the start of the Reformation. It still fulfilled a desire for connection to one’s past and to one’s fellow
Christians. At the very same time, however, it also helped satisfy the need for separateness, distinction, and self-definition, helping distinguish “us” from “them.” Confessional boundaries in the messy reality of lived experience were never as clear as they are in the
ideal religious geography of our mental maps. Protestant pilgrimage narratives reflect that messiness as well as their authors’ attempts to create order from the chaos.
Appendix
Figure 1. Bernhard von Breydenbach, Die fart oder reyz über mere zu dem heylige grad unsers herren Jhesu cristi ge Jherusalem Auch zu der heyligen iunckfrawen san Katherinen grab auf dem berg Synai (Augsburg: Anton Sorg, 1488).
Figure 2. Bernhard von Breydenbach, Dis buch ist innhaltend die heilige reysen gein Jherusalem zu dem heiligen grab und furbaß zu der hochgelobten jungfrawen und merteryn san katheryn (Speyer: Peter Drach, ca. 1503).
Figure 3. Schweigger, Ein Newe Reyßbeschreibung auß Teutschland nach Constantinopel und Jerusalem, facsimile of the 1608 edition (Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1964).
Figure 4. Hans Jacob Breüning, Orientalische Reyß deß . . . Hanß Jacob Breuning von und zu Buochenbach, so er selbander in der Türckey, under deß türckischen Sultans Jurisdiction und Gebiet, so wol in Europa als Asia und Africa. . . (Strasbourg: Johann Karolus, 1612).
Figure 5. Bernhard von Breydenbach, Die fart oder reyz, 1488.
Figure 6. Johann Helffrich, Kurtzer und Warhaffter Bericht, von der Reiß aus Venedig nach Hierusalem, von dannen in Aegyptem, auff den Berg Sinai, unnd folgends widerumb gen Venedig. . . (Leipzig: Johan Beyer, 1578).
Figure 7. Schweigger, Ein newe, 1608.
Figure 8. Photo by author.
Figure 9. Photo by author.
Figure 10. Bernhard Walter, Beschreibung Einer Reiß auß Teutschland biß in das gelobte Landt Palaestina unnd gen Jerusalem/auch auff den Berg Synai/von dannen widerumb zu ruck auff Venedig und Teutschlandt. . . (Munich: Anna Berg, 1609).
Figure 11. Walter, Beschreibung, 1609.
Figure 12. Walter, Beschreibung, 1609.
Figure 13. Breüning, Orientalische Reyß, 1612.
Figure 14. Hieronymus Scheidt, Kurtze und Warhafftige Beschreibung der Reise/Von Erffurdt aus Thüringen nach dem gewesenen gelobten Lande und der heiligen Stadt Jerusalem. . . (Erfurt: Jakob Singe, 1615).
Figure 15. Walter, Beschreibung, 1609.
Figure 16. Melchior Seydlitz, Gründtliche Beschreibung Der Wallfart nach dem heiligen Lande, Neben vermeldung der jemmerlichen und langwirigen Gefengnuß derselben Gesellschafft. . . (Görlitz: Ambrosius Fritsch, 1580).
Pilgrim-author Biographies
Medieval Pilgrim-authors
Breydenbach, Bernhard von: A noble canon of Mainz. He travelled from April, 1483 to
January 1484. His account was actually written by Martin Roth of Pfortzheim, who did not
travel with Breydenbach’s party. He did, however, take the artist Erhard Reuwich whose
first-hand images illustrated many editions of Breydenbach as well as other early modern
texts.1
Felix Fabri: Dominican Friar of the Preaching Order. He was born in Zurich in 1441 or
1442, and died in Ulm, Germany in 1502. He spent most of his life and career in Ulm. He
made two pilgrimages to the Holy Land, in 1480 and again in 1483-4, and wrote both
German and Latin narrative accounts of his travels. The former is rather brief, but the other is a very complete and accurate description of his journey.2
Protestant Pilgrim-authors
Amman, Hans Jacob: Swiss “wound doctor” from Thalwil. Educated as a physician by his
father. Went to Constantinople as the embassy physician with the Holy Roman Emperor’s
ambassador, Andreas Negroni. Traveled to the Holy Land in 1612 in the company of a
group of Turkish merchants, traveling through Anatolia to Jerusalem and on to Egypt. On
his way back to Switzerland, went through Alexandria and Rome. He became a citizen of
Zurich in 1614. Brought up on charges of heresy in Zurich several times (1634 and 1656).
From his travel narrative and information in the trial proceedings, he seems to have
1 Zur Shalev, Sacred Words and Worlds: Geography, Religion, and Scholarship, 1550-1700 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 90. 2 Beatrice Spade, Travelling to Jerusalem, http://faculty.colostate-pueblo.edu/ beatrice.spade/ seminar97/fabri.htm (accessed July 23, 2013).
believed that non-Christians might receive salvation. His narrative is the only one to give
any space to the idea of the heavenly Jerusalem.3
- Editions
- Zurich: Hardmeyer, 1618.
- Zurich: Hardmeyer, 1630.
Breüning, Hans Jacob: Came from an old Tübingen patrician family which can be traced
back to the 13th century. He was born in 1552, the son of an imperial councilman, Wolfgang
Breüning von Rommerscheim, and his wife Ursula Greiff, probably born in Speyer, though the possibility that she was born in Innsbruck cannot be ruled out. The aristocratic title he borrowed from Gut Buchenbach, near the city of Winnenden, which he acquired in 1587.
About his childhood and career nothing is known, though he seems to have enjoyed a well-
rounded humanistic education. He travelled East with the French noble-man, Jean Carlier
de Pinon.4 He was the head of a delegation to England’s Queen Elizabeth I from Duke
Friedrich the First of Württemberg. He likely died on September 26, 1617 (or perhaps
1616) and was buried according to the Lutheran rite in Tübingen.5
- Editions
- Strasbourg: Carolus, 1612.
*Ecklin, Daniel: Sometimes known as Daniel Egli, he was born in Aarau, Switzerland in
1532. His father, an apothecary, died when he was nine. From 1547-9 he was likely
enrolled at the Academy in Bern. He also studied in Basel. In his late teens he was
3 Titus Tobler, “Amman, Hans Jakob,” in Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, Band 1 (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1875), 400. 4 Pinon wrote a manuscript narrative in French currently housed in the Bibliotheque National de France. 5http://www.univie.ac.at/igl.geschichte/europaquellen/quellen17/breuningvonundzubuc henbach1612.htm (accessed on July 23, 2013).
apprenticed to several apothecaries in Switzerland and Italy. He left Europe in 1552, originally intending merely to visit Cyprus. He returned to Aarau in 1556 and opened an apothecary. He died in Aarau in 1564.
- Editions
- Freiburg: Stephan Graf, 1575.
- Basle: Samuel Apiarius, 1576.
- N. pl., 1580.
- Magdeburg: by Johann Franke for Wilhelm Ross, c. 1580.
- Heidelberg: Jacob Müller, 1581.
- Cologne: Nicolaus Schreiber, 1581.
- Hamburg: Heinrich Binder, 1595. (Low German)
Fürer von Haimendorf, Christoph: From a very prominent Nuremberg family, but nothing known aside from that.
– Editions
- Nuremberg: Wagenmann, 1620. (Latin)
- Nuremberg: Wolfgang Endter, 1646. (German)
* Helffrich, Johann: Nothing is known about him, though Jöcher suggests he was an artisan.6
- Editions
- Leipzig: Johann Beyer, 1578.
- Leipzig: Jacob Berwalts Erben, 1578, 1580, 1581.
- Nuremberg: 1580.
6 Simon, Feyerabend, 22.
- Leipzig: Zacharius Bärwald, 1589.
* Rauwolf, Leonhard: Born in Augsburg sometime in the 1530s to a local merchant family,
Rauwolf may have studied medicine at Wittenberg. In any case, he travelled to France in
1560 and was awarded his doctorate at Valence. Soon he was in Montpellier studying botany. During his time in France and Italy, which he visited in 1563, he collected many medicinal plant specimens. In 1563 he married Regina Jung, settling in Augsburg. He left for a botanical tour of the Near East in May 1573 in the employ of his brother-in-law,
Melchior Manlich, travelling on Manlich’s own merchant ship. He arrived back in Augsburg in February 1576. He took the post of head doctor at the local plague hospital. In 1588, however, he was removed from that position for refusing to convert to Catholicism when
Augsburg abandoned biconfessionalism. He then moved to Linz and was awarded the post of town doctor. He most likely died of dysentery while fighting the Turks at the siege of
Hatvan in 1596. His collection of plants is currently held at Leiden University.7
-Editions
- Lauingen: Leonhart Reinmichel, 1582
- Frankfurt am Main: Christoff Rab, 1582
- Lauingen, Leonhart Reinmichel (for the Augsburg bookseller, Georg Willer),
1583
Scheidt, Heironymus: (1594-1651) Scheidt was a merchant and councilman in Erfurt. Was the son of the merchant Abraham Scheidt. Visited Schweigger in Nuremberg before heading east. Born in Erfurt in 1594. Went to France in search of soldiering opportunities probably around 15 years old (1609). In 1612 entered Danish service. Participated in the Swedish
7 Simon, Feyerabend, 20.
campaign and in 1613, following the death of his father, went back, after he luckily saved his life from the hand of robbers, to his hometown. At the beginning of the next year he went to Venice and Genoa and embarked from Genoa to the Holy Land. He landed at Cyprus before continuing on to Jaffa. He reached Jerusalem on the 11th of April. After that he visited the Jordan River and the Dead Sea. He left Jerusalem on May 4th. A storm threw his ship off course to Adalia, he spent time in Alexandretta and on the return in Alicante. He returned to German soil on the 10th of December at Emden and he made it back to Erfurt without further incident on the day before Christmas Eve. A year later his travel narrative appeared. The preface is dated “29th November 1615.” A second edition was published in
1679 for the bookseller Zeising in Helmstadt.8
- Editions
- Erfurt: Singe, 1615.
- Erfurt: Singe, 1617.
- Helmstadt: Zeising, 1679.
** Schweigger, Salomon: Lutheran preacher born in 1551 in Haigerloch (Hohenzollern).
He grew up in his grandparents’ house and his father was a notary. He was educated in
Latin- and cloister schools in the Duchy of Württemberg. In 1572, he matriculated in theology at Tübingen, but left without completing his studies. On September 26, 1576, with only six thalers in his pocket, in search of adventure in foreign lands, he went to Austria and met Joachim von Sinzendorf, Emperor Rudolph II’s ambassador. On November 10,
8 Ratzel, Friedrich, “Scheidt, Hieronymus” in Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (1890), [Online edition] URL: http://www.deutsche-biographie.de/pnd129171093.html?anchor=adb (accessed Julty 15, 2013).
1577 they left from Vienna to Constantinople. On the way, Schweigger received ordination at Graz and joined the diplomatic entourage as embassy preacher. On entering Ottoman territory, Sinzendorf and his party were greeted by dignitaries of the Sultan and
Schweigger began his study of Muslim customs. The party arrived by ship at
Constantinople on New Year’s Day, 1578. They were met by the outgoing ambassador
David von Unna who stayed on for another month along with his ambassadorial preacher
Stephan Gerlach. Gerlach had been the intermediary in the early exchanges between the
Tübingen theologians and the Greek Patriarch of Constantinople. Although the Greeks refused to budge on theological dogma, Schweigger in his turn was treated well, even befriending the Patriarch’s chief notary (Protonotar), Theodosios Zygomalas. Schweigger gained through such associations a glimpse into Eastern Christianity and its situation under the Ottomans. To a great extent he used his more than three year residence in
Constantinople to observe the goings-on in the Sultan’s court as much as the activities of both common and noble Muslims. Schweigger saw the rule of the Sultan as a “dreadful tyranny” and a punishment from God. In May 1581, as Sinzendorf’s tenure as ambassador was coming to an end, Schweigger gained the ambassador’s permission to travel with a group of noble companions on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, traveling also through Damascus and Alexandria. By November of that year Schweigger was back in his homeland. Martin
Crusius welcomed him at Tübingen with an ode written in Greek and Latin and published the work and at the same time published a preliminary but accurate account of
Schweigger’s four-year sojourn in the East based on Schweigger’s own letters. Schweigger at this point sought employment in the service of the church in Württemberg and found such in Nürtingen from 1582-1583 and then as city preacher in Grötzingen from 1583-
1589. In 1589, by the good graces of Baron Heinrich Hermann von Milchling, who had
himself made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem twenty years previously, Schweigger was
appointed to the royal parish at Wilhermsdorf in Middle Franconia. In 1605, Schweigger
was given a position at the Frauenkirche in Nuremberg. He spent the next seventeen years
there and died on June 12, 1622. In addition to his travel and pilgrimage narrative,
Schweigger also published a German translation of the Quran at Nuremberg in 1616. Most
likely he based his translation on an earlier Italian translation. In 1585, Schweigger
translated Luther’s Small Catechism into Italian. This work was published by Duke Herzog
Ludwig of Württemberg, who sent many copies to Constantinople to be distributed among
the enslaved Christians there.9
- Editions
- Nuremberg, Johann Lantzenberger, 1608.
- Nuremberg: Lantzenberger, 1613.
- Nuremberg: Caspar Fulden, 1619.
- Nuremberg: Endter, 1639.
- Nuremberg: Lochner, 1639.
- Onoltzbach: Lentz, 1660.
- Nuremberg: Kramer, 1664.
- Nuremberg: Felßecker, 1665.
9 Translation and adaptation of, Heyd, Wilhelm von, „Schweigger, Salomon“, in: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (1891), S. [Online edition]; URL: http://www.deutsche- biographie.de/pnd117653772.html?anchor=adb
* Seydlitz, Melchior von: Nothing known aside from what he reports in his narrative of
pilgrimage and imprisonment.
-Editions
- Basel: Samuel Apiarius, 1576.
- Görlitz: Ambrosius Fritsch, 1581.
- Görlitz: Fritsch, 1582.
- Görlitz: Fritsch, 1583.
- Görlitz: Fritsch, 1584.
Wild, Johan: Born in Nuremberg in 1585. No information about his education exists. When
he was 19 years old he went to Hungary and joined the imperial troops fighting the Turks.
He was soon taken prisoner. He was bought and sold several times, moving around the
Near East and Levant before being sent to Constantinople by his owner, the Pasha of
Belgrade. There Wild was sold to a merchant who took him to Egypt where he was again
sold, this time to a Persian merchant. He was then taken in a large pilgrim caravan across
Sinai to Mecca and Medina where he saw the Islamic holy places. His Persian owner had
business in Damascus and on the way stopped briefly in Jerusalem where they visited the
Holy Sepulcher. On the return to Cairo, Wild was sold yet again, this time to a Turkish
merchant. Eventually, Wild was freed from servitude and made his way to Constantinople
where he met and became friendly with the Imperial diplomat Michael Startzer. Startzer
sent Wild back to Germany at the earliest opportunity. By the end of 1611, he was again in
Nuremberg.10
10 Hantzsch, Viktor, “Wild, Johannes,” in Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie 42 (1897), 487- 488 [Online edition] URL: http://www.deutsche-biographie.de/ pnd120141620.html?anchor=adb (accessed June 12, 2013).
– Editions
- Manuscript held at the Bayerische Stadtsbibliothek in Munich (cgm.
1272)
- Nuremberg: 1613.
- Nuremberg: 1623.
- Helmstedt: 1639.
Early Modern Catholic Pilgrim-authors
* Ehrenberg, Johann: Other than the fact that Ehrenberg was a German nobleman, a cathedral dean in Mainz, and a provost in Speyer, little is known about him except what he reports in his narrative.11
- Editions
- Basel: Samuel Apiarius, 1576. (printed along with Ecklin)
Lussy, Melchior: Statesman, born at Stans, Canton of Unterwalden, Switzerland, in 1529.
Even in his youth he filled various offices, took part in the campaigns of 1557 and 1573, and
was after awarded the position of high bailiff of his native canton ten times. He was often
an emissary of the Confederacy at Stans, as well as in France, Spain, etc. In particular he
represented, along with Abbot Joachim Eichhorn of Einsiedeln, the Catholic cantons of
Switzerland at the Council of Trent. He arrived at Trent on March 16, 1562, and stayed till
June, 1563. Lussy was a friend of Charles Borromeo, with whom he often corresponded. In
11 Simon, Feyerabend, 20.
1583, he made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, of which he published an account. On his return,
Lussy founded the Capuchin monastery at Stans. He died there on November 14, 1606.12
- Editions
- Freiberg: Abraham Gemperlin, 1590.
** Radziwil, Niklaus Christoph: Polish nobleman who studied at Strasbourg and, after
1563, at Tübingen. Then, until 1567 he visited various aristocratic estates and courts. He
was present at the Reichstag meeting in Augsburg in 1566 and there waited on Emperor
Maximillian II. Also in that year he visited Rome and became friends with Pope Pius V. He
converted to Catholicism along with his brother. In 1575 he fell deathly ill and vowed to
make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. After her recovered, he participated in the war against the
Russians. He was wounded in the siege of Polazk and was later also at the siege of Pleskow.
Between 1579 and 1586 he was the Grand Marshal of Lithuania. In 1582 he went on his
pilgrimage journey. From Venice he traveled by ship through Dalmatia, Crete, Cyprus and the coast of Lebanon, also visiting Damascus, the Sea of Galilee, and Jerusalem. To the
Cloister of the Holy Savior in Jerusalem, he endowed a hereditary bequest. Then he travelled to Egypt, visiting Cairo, the pyramids, and Alexandria. On the return journey he was attacked by pirates and returned home to Poland in 1584. Perhaps for this journey, he was inducted into the Order of the Holy Grave by the Pope and received the title of a
Protector of the Holy Land. From 1586 to 1590, he was the castellan of Traken. King
Sigismund appointed him the voivode of Traken in 1590 and of Vilna in 1604. In contrast to his cousin Janusz, who was involved in a decisive disagreement with the king, Nicolaus
12 Adapted from, Johann Georg Mayer, "Melchior Lussy," The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 9 (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910). http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/ 09437c.htm (accessed October 18, 2010).
remained loyal. Concerning his experiences on pilgrimage, he wrote a report which later appeared in print in a Latin translation. This narrative was printed many times. Radziwil did all in his power after 1574 to further the aims of the Counter Reformation in his estates and jurisdictions. Numerous churches were closed to Protestants and transferred to
Catholics. He also endowed various new churches. After he was made voivode of Vilna, he closed the Protestant churches in the palaces and shut down Protestant printers. He even ordered all the Calvinist Bibles, which had been published by his own father, collected and burned.13 He endowed a Jesuit college in Neswisch (modern day Belarus).
- Editions
- Brunsberg: Schönfels, 1601. (Latin)
- Mainz: Lippen, 1603. (German)
Tschudi, Ludwig: Born on the 19th of April, 1495 in Glarus. Died on January 12, 1530 in
Gräppling. He was the son of Ludwig the Elder and Margaretha Kilchmatter, and married
Agatha Gallati in 1514. He fought in the battles of Novara (1513) and Marignano (1515) during the War of the League of Cambrai. For his service, Gian Giacomo Trivulzio named him the captain of the Milanese Guard. In 1519, he undertook a pilgrimage to Palestine and was made a Knight of the Holy Grave in Jerusalem. His travel narrative was published in
1606. In 1520, he was the provincial governor of Werdenberg. In 1522, he arranged an agreement between the Three Leagues and France. In the same year he fought at the Battle of Bicocca. In 1524, he was captain of the Swiss forces. In 1525, he was taken prisoner at
13 “Radziwill’s Bible,” also known as the “Brest Bible,” was a translation “by Polish Calvinists including Jan Laski and published at Brest Litovsk in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, with the financial backing of the Grand Hetman of Lithuania, Prince Nicolas Radziwill.” (Greengrass, European Reformation, 260)
the Battle of Pavia. After his release, he left military service. He soon after befriended
Huldrych Zwingli, but avoided involvement in the Reformation.14
- Editions
- Rorschach am Bodensee: Schnell, 1606.
- Freiburg am Breisgau: Böckler, 1610.
Villinger, Peter: Priest from Arth, Switzerland, he left home with a small group of companions on the 1st of June, 1565 and arrived in Venice thirteen days later. There he met
a larger group of pilgrims including the Protestant pilgrim-author Johann Helffrich. With a
final group totaling sixty individuals, he left Venice on 2 July and landed at Jaffa on 9
August, arriving in Jerusalem a few days later on the 13th. Leaving the Holy Land on August
31, the pilgrim party was ship-wrecked on the Lycian coast, near the town if Myra. Several
pilgrims drowned, but the rest, including Villinger, were taken into captivity. Villinger
spent three years as a galley slave, until finally being bought and freed by a Greek merchant
on May 1, 1568. He was given travelling money by the Venetian Bailo and reached Venice
on October 26th. He was back in Arth in mid-November.15
- Editions
- Constance: Kalt, 1603.
- Constance: Kalt, 1604.
Walter, Bernhard: Little is known of Walter aside from what he says about himself in his
pilgrimage narrative.
- Editions
14 Veronika Feller-Vest, “Tschudi, Ludwig (der Jüngere),” in Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz [http://www.hls-dhs-dss.ch/textes/d/D17961.php] (accessed June 15, 2013). 15 Titus Tobler, Bibliographia Geographia Palestinae (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1867), 78.
- Munich: Adam Berg, 1608.
- Munich: Adam Berg, 1609.
- Munich: Adam Berg, 1610.
* - included in the first edition of Feyerabend ** - included in later editions of Feyerabend
Bibliography
Medieval Pilgrimage Narratives
Breydenbach, Bernhard von. Die fart oder reyz über mere zu dem heylige grad unsers herren
Jhesu cristi ge Jherusalem Auch zu der heyligen iunckfrawen san Katherinen grab auf
dem berg Synai. Augsburg: Anton Sorg, 1488.
---. Dis buch ist innhaltend die heilige reysen gein Jherusalem zu dem heiligen grab und
furbaß zu der hochgelobten jungfrawen und merteryn san katheryn. Speyer: Peter
Drach, ca. 1503.
---. Peregrinatio ad terram sanctam. Wittemberg: Nickel Schirlentz, 1536.
Fabri, Felix. Eigentliche beschreibung der hin und wider farth zu dem Heyligen Landt gen
Jerusalem/und furter durch die grosse Wüsteney zu dem Heiligen Berge Horeb Sinay/
darauß zuvernemen was wunders die Pilgrin hin und wider auff Land und wasser zu
erfahren und zu besehen haben/Uber die maß kurtzweilig und lüstig zu
lesen/sonderlich denen so der Heiligen schrifft ettwas erfahren sein . . . . Frankfurt am
Main: David Zöpfel, 1556.
Tucher, Hans. Nach Cristi unnsers lieben herren gepurt M.cccc.lxxix. jare. . . . Pin ich Hanns
Tucher Burger zu Nüremberg. . . . daselbest außgezogen. . . . Die heyligen Stete. . . . czu
besuche. . . . Augsburg: Johann Schönsperger, 1482.
Wanckel, Nicolaus. Ein kurtze vermerkung der heyligen Stet des heyligen landts/in und umb
Jerusalem/mit verzeychnung der mercklichsten ding in den selbigen geschehen/Auch
wie nahent unnd verre ein Stat von der andern sey. Nuremberg: Jobst Gutknecht,
1517.
Protestant Pilgrimage Narratives
Amman, Hans Jacob. Reiß in das Gelobte Land: Von Wien auß Oesterreich/durch
Ungariam/Serviam/Bulgariam und Thraciam auff Constantinopel: Ferner Durch
Natoliam . . . auff Jerusalem. . . . Zurich: Hardmeyer, 1618.
---. Reiß Ins Globte Land: Von Wein auß Oesterreich/durch Ungariam Serviam/Bulgariam
unnd Thraciam auff Constantinopel: Ferner Durch Natoliam . . . auff Jerusalem. . . .
Zurich: Bodmer, 1630.
Breüning von Buchenbach, Hans Jacob. Orientalische Reyß deß . . . Haß Jacob Breuning von
und zu Buochencach, so er selbander in der Türckey, under deß türckischen Sultans
Jurisdiction und Gebiet, so wol in Europa als Asia und Africa. . . . Strasbourg: Johann
Karolus, 1612.
Ecklin, Daniel. Wandel oder Reissbüchlin/M. Daniel Ecklins, seiner Reyss, so er gethan hat,
von Arow, gahn Jerusalem, zu dem heiligen Grab, Was er in der zeit gesehen und
erlitten : Mit sampt einer kurtzen beschreibung des gelopten Landts, und der Statt
Jerusalem, wie es zu dieser zeit hierumb ein gestalt hat. Basel: Samuel Apiarius, 1574.
---. Reiß zum heiligen Grab/So M. Daniel Ecklin von Arow gehn Jerusalem gethan/wz er in der
zeit erlitten: Sampt einer kurtzen Beschreibung des gelobten Landts/und der Statt
Jerusalem/wie es noch zu unserer zeit hierumb eine gestalt habe. . . . Basel: Samuel
Apiarius, 1578.
---. Reiß zum heiligen Grab/So M. Daniel Ecklin von Arow gehn Jerusalem gethan/was er in
der zeit erlitten/Sampt einer kurtzen beschreibung des gelobten Lands/und der Statt
Jerusalem . . . Sehr lustig und nutzlich zu lesen und zu hören. Heidelberg: Müller, 1581.
Feyerabend, Sigismund, ed. Das Reyßbuch deß heyligen Lands, Das ist Ein grundtliche
beschreibung aller vnd jeder Meer vnd Bilgerfahrten zum heyligen Lande, so bißhero,
in zeit dasselbig von den Vngläubigen erobert vnd inn gehabt, beyde mit bewehrter
Hand vnd Kriegßmacht, zu wider Eroberung deren Landt. . . . Frankfurt am Main:
Feyerabend, 1584.
Fürer von Haimendorf, Christoph. Christophori Füreri ab Haimendorf, Equitis Aurati,
Duumviri Reip. Noribergensis primarii . . . Itinerarium Aegypti, Arabiae, Palaestinae,
Syriae, Aliarumque Regionem Orientalium. . . . Nuremberg: Abraham Wagenmann,
1620.
---. Christoph Fürers von Haimendorff, Ritters, Deß Eltern geheimen Rahts/vordersten
Losungers/Schultheissen/und Obristen Kriegshaubtmanns der Stadt Nürnberg/auch
des löblichen Fränkischen Kraises Kriegsrahts Reis-Beschreibung. In Egypten/
Arabien/Palästinam/Syrien/etc. : mit beygefügter Landtafel/und derselben Erklärung.
Nuremberg: Endter, 1646.
Helffrich, Johann. Kurtzer und Warhaffter Bericht, von der Reiß aus Venedig nach
Hierusalem, von dannen in Aegyptem, auff den Berg Sinai, unnd folgends widerumb
gen Venedig. . . . Leipzig: Johan Beyer, 1578.
---. Kurtzer und warhafftiger Bericht, Von der Reyß aus Venedig nach Hierusalem, Von dannen
inn Aegypten, auff den Berg Sinai, Alcair, Alexandria, und folgends widerumb gen
Venedig. . . . Leipzig: Berwald: 1589.
Müntzer, Wolfgang. Reyßbeschreibung Von Venedig auß nach Jerusalem/ Damascum und
Constantinopel/ und dann wider nacher Venedig. . . . Nuremberg: Ludwig Lochner,
1624.
Rauwolf, Leonhard. Aigentliche Beschreibung der Raiß, so er vor diser zeit gegen Auffgang
inn die Morgenländer, fürnemlich Syriam, Iudaeam, Arabiam, Mesopotamiam,
Babyloniam, Assyriam, Armeniam &c. nicht ohne geringe mühe unnd grosse gefahr
selbs volbracht. Augsberg: Georg Willer, 1583.
---. Aigentliche Beschreibung der Raiss inn die Morgenlaender. Facsimile of the 1583 edition,
with introd. by Dietmar Henze. Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1971.
Scheidt, Hieronymus. Kurtze und Warhafftige Beschreibung der Reise/Von Erffurdt aus
Thüringen nach dem gewesenen gelobten Lande und der heiligen Stadt Jerusalem. . . .
Erfurt: Jakob Singe, 1615.
Schweigger, Salomon. Ein Newe Reyßbeschreibung auß Teutschland nach Constantinopel und
Jerusalem. Nuremberg: Johann Lantzenberger, 1608.
---. Ein Newe Reyßbeschreibung auß Teutschland nach Constantinopel und Jerusalem.
Facsimile of the 1608 edition, with introd. by Rudolph Neck. Graz: Akademische
Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1964.
Seydlitz, Melchior. Gründtliche Beschreibung Der Wallfart nach dem heiligen Lande, Neben
vermeldung der jemmerlichen und langwirigen Gefengnuß derselben Gesellschafft. . . .
Görlitz: Ambrosius Fritsch, 1580.
---. Gründtliche Beschreibung Der Wallfart nach dem heiligen Lande, Neben vermeldung der
jemmerlichen und langwirigen Gefengnuß derselben Gesellschafft. . . . Görlitz:
Ambrosius Fritsch, 1582.
Wild, Johann. Neue Reysbeschreibung eines Gefangenen Chrsiten Christen/Wie derselbe neben
anderer Gefährligkeit zum sibendem Mal verkaufft worden/ welche sich Anno 1604.
anfangen/und 1611. ihr end genommen. . . . Nuremberg: Ludwig Lochner, 1623.
Catholic Pilgrimage Narratives
Greffin Affagart. Relation de Terre Sainte (1533-1534). Edited by J. Chavanon. Paris:
Lecoffre, 1902.
Ehrenberg, Johann. Zwo Reise zum heiligen Grab: Die Erste deß Edlen vesten Johansen von
Ehrenberg/so er sampt endern vom Adel und etlichen Niderländern volbracht . . . .
Basel: Samuel Apiarius, 1576.
Lussy, Melchior. Reißbuch gen Hierusalem Welcher massen der Gestreng, Edel, Nothvest,
Fürsichtig Und Weiß Herr Melchior Lussy Ritter, Landamman zu Underwalden in das
heilige Land Palestina gezogen ist; Darinnnen dann die fürnembste Stätt und Orther
von Christo unserm liebsten Herren und Heyland weyland persönlich heimgesucht . . .
werden. . . . Freiberg in Uchtland: Abraham Gemperlin, 1590.
Radziwill, Nikolas Christoph. Hierosolymitana Peregrinatio Illustrissimi Domini Nicolai
Christophori Radzivili, Ducis in Olika et Nyeswiesz, Comitis in Szydlowiec et Myr. [et]c.
IV. Epistolis compræhensa. . . . Braunsberg: Georg Schönfels, 1601.
---. Jüngst geschehene Hierosolymitanische Reyse von Wegfahrt Des . . . Nicolai Christophori
Radzivili: Welche in vier Sendschreiben begriffen/darinn sehr nützliche/lustige und
setzame ding/im Heiligen und Egyptischen Landt: in vielen Inseln, auff dem Meer und
Nilo, vin den Christen, Türken, Arabiern und anderer allerhand jetziger Zeit Sachen zu
ersehen/Auß Polischer Sprach . . . versetzt . . . . Mainz: Balthazar Lipp, 1603.
Saligniac, Barthelemy. Itinerarium Sacrae Scripturae. Hoc Est, Sanctae Terrae, Regionumque
Finitiarum Descriptio. Magdeburg: Donatus, 1593.
---. Itinerarium Heirosolomitanum, Reiß zum H. Grab und Pilgramschafft in das gelobte Land:
Darinnen alß in einer kurtzen Chronica, des H. Landes jetzige gelegenheit/an
Städten/Castellen/Dörffern . . . erkleret und fürgetellet wird. Leipzig: Henning Grosse,
1612.
Tschudi, Ludwig. Historische Beschreibung/der Reyß und Bilgerfahrt zu dem Heyligen Grab,
Deß Edlen und Gestrengen Herrn/Ludwigen Tschudis von Glarus. . . . Freiburg am
Breisgau: Martin Böckler, 1610.
Villinger, Peter. Bilgerfahrt und Beschreibung der Hierusolomitanischen Reiß in das heylig
Land/unnd deren Provntzen Palestina: wie es zu jetziger Zeit beschaffen/wz noch an
Antiquiteten/an allen und jeden H. Oertern un[d] sonsten zusehen; Daneben ein schöne
Lehr unnd Underweisung eines Christlichen Bilgers/so sich auff solche Reiß begeben
will. . . . Constance am Bodensee: Nikolaus Kalt, 1603.
Walter, Bernhard. Beschreibung Einer Reiß auß Teutschland biß in das gelobte Landt
Palaestina unnd gen Jerusalem/auch auff den Berg Synai/von dannen widerumb zu
ruck auff Venedig und Teutschlandt. . . . Munich: Anna Berg, 1609.
Zuallart, Johann. Deliciae Hierosolomytanae & totius Palaestinae. Das is/Bilgerfahrt in das
Heilige Land: darin nicht allein dasselbige sampt seinen heiligen Orten zu Jerusalem
Betlehem/Bethanien/unnd an dem Fluß Jordan [et]c. Cologne: Gerhard Grevenbruch,
1606.
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